
fcf 



Class 

Book_ 









it 




THE RUSTIC BRIDGE 



" Upon a rustic bridge 
AVe pass a gull." 



Task, BuuL 1 



•UONTLSlHECfc; 



Chcever's Cow pet 



4 



LECTURES 



LIFE, GENIUS, AND INSANITY 



OP 



C O W P E R. 



BY 



GEORGE B. CHEEVEK, D.D., 

UJTHOR OF "LECTURES ON THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS," " POTVERS OF THB 
WORLD TO COME," " TVANDERINwS 9F A PILGRIM," ETC. 



NEW YORK: 
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

No. 285 BEOADWAT. 



1856. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 

ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District^Couii of the United States, in and for the 

Southern DistcicUof New York. 



CONTENTS. 



*-^» 

CHAPTER PAGB 

Introduction 5 

I. — Cowper's Childhood 9 

II.— His Education 26 

III. — State of Religion in England at the time of 

his Conversion 42 

IV. — Literature and Genius of the Period 61 

V.— His Awakening 69 

VI. — His Conversion 84 

VII. — His Survey of his own Case 94 

VIH. — Removal to Olney 105 

IX. — His Autobiography, &c 122 

X. — The Mental Malady made subservient by Grace 

to a Sweeter Poetry 132 

XI. — The Child of God walking in darkness 138 

. XII. — Death of Cowper's Brother. ! 145 

XIII. — Recurrence of Cowper's Malady 156 

XIV. — Publication of his First Volume 166 

XV.— Cowper's Satire 171 

XVI.— His Humor and Pathos 188 

XVII. — The Balance of Faculties in Cowper's Mind. 200 

XVIII.— Composition of " The Task" 217 

XIX. — Infernal Conflicts and Invisible Grace 227 



IV CONTENTS 



CHAPTEB PAGE 

XX. — Tenor of his Life and Employments 244 



1 

I 



XXI. — His Religious Enjoyment of Nature 258 

XXII. — Removal to Weston 273 

XXIII. — His Different Circumstances and Composi- 
tions Compared 288 

XXIV. — The Reception of his Mother's Picture 297 

XXV. — Friendship with Hayley 320 

XXYL— Efficacy of Prayer, 339 

XXVII. — Lessons from Cowper's Imaginary Despair. . 347 

XXVIII. — Letters and Poetry 361 

XXIX. — Final Recurrence of Cowper's Malady, and 

his Death 380 

XXX.— Conclusion 404 



INTRODUCTION 



A series of Lectures on the Life and Poetry of Cowper, 
delivered a few years since, became the origin of this 
present volume. On a new and more thorough examina- 
tion of the Autobiography and Letters of Cowper, in con- 
nection with the Poet's Memoir by South ey, the impression 
has been deepened of the injustice done to both Cowper 
and Newton by the tenor of that Memoir. The evil and 
the imperfection are in what is omitted, as well as in 
some things injuriously set down. The remarkable les- 
sons of Divine Providence and Grace, the spiritual disci- 
pline through which Cowper was carried, and the mani- 
festations of a Saviour's love to his soul, were slightly 
passed over, and in some cases misinterpreted and per- 
verted. 

The literary task-work of Southey, in whatever he un- 
dertook, was almost perfect for its exquisite ease and 
quietness, and for the good sense and truth of his criti- 
cisms, illustrated at will from the singular variety of his 
reading. But when he came to speak of personal religion, 
the good angel of his genius, if separated from the Prayer- 
book and the Church, seemed suddenly in gloom. Like 
Dante's guide, who could lead the way through hell and 
purgatory, but was not sufficient for the mysteries of 
heaven, a mind ever so cultivated and poetical, may be 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

unable to behold the things of the Spirit of God, and they 
may even be regarded as foolishness. 

Thou art arrived where of itself my ken 
No further reaches. I with skill and art 
Thus far have drawn thee on. Expect no more 
Sanction of warning voice, or sign from me. 

Dante. 

Southey knew no more of religion, in its spiritual dis- 
cernment, than Virgil, unless he had been taught it by 
the Spirit of God in his heart ; and if he had been thus 
taught, he would certainly have been more careful not to 
deride, or caricature, or deny, the work of the Spirit of 
God in other hearts. 

One of the main purposes in this volume has been to 
illustrate more fully the religious experience of Cowper, 
and to trace the causes and the manner of his religious 
gloom. Some very manifest sources or occasions of its 
exasperation there lie scattered along in the course and 
manner of his life, Avhich might have been removed by 
the wisdom of experience, and would have been, could his 
life have been lived over again ; but the secret spring dis- 
ordered, the point and manner of entanglement and con- 
fusion, remain as much a mystery as ever, and always 
will. The chords of the mental harp elude the sight, and 
so do the pressures that interfere with its freedom and 
melody. 

The first dethronement of Cowper's reason being be- 
fore his conversion, his coming forth from so thick a 
gloom an entirely changed being, a new creature in Christ 
Jesus, was so surprising a phenomenon, that it is not 
much to be wondered at that the world could not compre- 
hend the scene. If Cowper had returned to his chambers 
in the Temple, and to his gay and irreligious life, they 
would have thought him perfectly cured. But it was as 



INTRODUCTION. VII 

if some magician had come forth from a prison in the 
shape of an angel, and it seemed a trick of legerdemain 
or madness. They thought it but a change in the same 
tragedy, the more especially as madness has its passages 
from tragedy to comedy, and from comedy to tragedy. 
Some said his religion was owing to his madness ; some 
said his madness was owing to his religion ; some inti- 
mated both, and would not even receive his own testimony, 
not even after the production of a poem of such consum- 
mate bright perfection as " The Task" had proved that his 
mind was as transparent and serene in its faculties of 
genius and of power, almost as an angel's. 

But the second access of his malady came on, a second 
and sudden dethronement of reason, at the close of eight 
years of angelic light and peace, and enjoyment in Christ 
Jesus ; and out of that he came as with a vail over his 
spiritual vision, or as one bound hand and foot with grave- 
clothes, or as one emerging from a fog, with the remnants 
of the thick cloud hanging to him ; and after that, he 
never could recover the brightness of his former hope, 
nor the joy of his first experience. What a strange and 
melancholy intrusion of the expelled delirium, when it 
could go no further, when it was cured, indeed, all but that 
gloom ! and what a caput mortuum of despair, left in the 
crucible after such a fiery trial of his intellect ! A re- 
covery in every other respect, save only the delusion of a 
gloom so profound, that it produced the reality of anguish 
all the keener, because of the strong and undiminished 
affection of his heart still turned heavenward, and like 
the magnet of a compass as true in midnight as at noon ! 

His prevailing insanity, so far as it could be called in- 
sanity at all, in those long intervals of many years, dur- 
ing which his mind was serene and active, his habit of 
thought playful, and his affections more and more fervent, 
was simply the exclusion of a personal religious hope to 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

such a degree as to seem like habitual despair. This de- 
spair was his insanity, for it could be only madness that 
could produce it, after such a revelation of the glory of 
God in the face of Jesus Christ as he had been permitted 
in the outset to enjoy. If Paul had gone deranged after 
being let down from his trance and vision in the third 
heavens, and the type of his derangement had been the 
despair of ever again beholding his Saviour's face in glory, 
and the obstinate belief of being excluded by Divine de- 
cree from heaven, though his affections were all the while 
in heaven, even that derangement would have been scarcely 
more remarkable than Cowper's. In the case of so deli- 
cate and profound an organization as his, it is very diffi- 
cult to trace the effect of any entanglement or disturbance 
from one side or the other between the nervous and men- 
tal sensibilities of his frame. There was a set of Border 
Ruffians continually threatening his peace, endeavoring to 
set up slavery instead of freedom, and ever and anon 
making their incursions, and defacing the title-deeds to 
his inheritance, which they could not carry away ; and 
Gowper might have assured himself with the consolation 
that those documents could not be destroyed, being regis- 
tered in heaven, and God as faithful to them, as if their 
record in his own heart had been always visible. We have 
endeavored to bring into plainer observation the course of 
the divine discipline with this child of God walking in 
darkness, and to illustrate some of the neglected but pro- 
foundly instructive lessons of the darkness and the con- 
flict. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE TRIALS OP COWPER'S CHILDHOOD. — COMPANIONS AND INFLU- 
ENCES AT SCHOOL. — HIS OWN IMPRESSIONS. 

The birthplace of the poet Cowper, one of the 
few poets in our world, beloved as well as admired 
by those who read him, was in the town of Great 
Birkhamstead, in Hertfordshire county, in En- 
gland. He was born in 1731, November the 15th, 
at the rectory of his father, Dr. John Cowper, who 
was chaplain to George II., and rector of Birk's 
Parish. Cowper's mother died at the age of thirty- 
four, in 1737, when the future poet was but six 
years of age. Yet at this early period her tender- 
ness and love made an impression on the whole 
heart and nature of her child, never to be effaced. 
It came out more strongly, as such early impres- 
sions often do, and perhaps always, when they are 
lasting, at a far later age. Near fifty years after 
his beloved mother's death, Cowper wrote "that 
not a week passes (perhaps I might with equal 
veracity say a day) in which I do not think of her ; 
such was the impression her tenderness made 



10 CHILDHOOD 01 COWPEH. 

upon me, though the opportunity she had for 
showing it was so short." 

John Kandolph once said to an intimate friend, 
" I used to be called a Frenchman, because I took 
the French side in politics ; and though this was 
unjust, yet the truth is, I should have been a 
French atheist, if it had not been for one recol- 
lection ; and that was the memory of the time 
when my departed mother used to take my little 
hand in hers, and cause me on my knees to say, 
c Our Father who art in heaven! " 

How sweet a picture of maternal tenderness 
and care ! Sometimes, in the midst of darkness 
and despondency, in after years, Kandolph would 
write, " I am a fatalist ! I am all but friendless. 
Only one human being ever knew me. She only 
knew me !" The idea of that being who knew 
him in the dear relation of mother, continued to 
be as a guardian angel to him ; many a time it 
seemed the only separation between him and 
death. Oh the power of a mother's love and 
prayers ! 

Short, indeed, was the opportunity granted to 
Cowper's mother to manifest her tenderness and 
care. Yet that opportunity was the time of ten- 
derest, fondest love ; between three years old and 
seven or eight, a mother loves her children more 
tenderly, and does more for the formation of their 
character than in any other equal period. And 



CHILDHOOD OF COWPEE. 11 

one of the reasons plainly is, because in that inter- 
val the development of being and of character is 
sweeter, fresher, more attractive and original, than 
in any other. The poet remembered to his latest 
day, with the warm memory of love, that period 
of an affectionate mother's gentle and incessant 
care. He remembered his hours in the nursery, 
remembered when the gardener Eobin drew him 
day by day to school in his own little bauble coach, 
carefully covered with his velvet cap and warm 
scarlet mantle. He remembered when he sat by 
his mother at her feet, and played with the flow- 
ers wrought upon her dress, and with imitative art 
amused himself and her with pricking the forms 
of the violet, the pink, the jasmin, into paper 
with a pin ; the soft maternal hand from moment 
to moment laid upon his head, with endearing 
words and smiles that went into the depths of his 
heart. The pastoral home of his infancy, so dear 
for such inexpressibly delightful hours of the en- 
joyment of a mother's love, was his but for a brief 
interval. 



" Short-lived possession 1 but the record fair, 
That memory keeps of aD thy kindness there, 
Still outlives many a storm ihat has effaced 
A thousand other themes less deeply traced. 
Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, 
That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid ; 
Thy morning bounties, ere I left my home, 
The biscuit or confectionary plum ; 



12 CHILDHOOD OF COWPER. 

The fragrant waters on my cheek bestowed 

By thine own hand, till fresh they shone and glowed ; 

All this, and more endearing still than all, 

Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall, 

Ne'er roughened by those cataracts and breaks 

That humor interposed too often makes ; 

All this, still legible in memory's page, 

And still to be so to my latest age, 

Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay 

Such honors to thee as my numbers may ; 

Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, 

Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here." 

The morning brightness of such a mother's love, 
the child, passed into a man, could not forget, 
though all things were forgotten. He remem- 
bered the sound of the tolling bells on the day of 
her burial, and his seeing the black hearse that 
bore her away slowly moving off, and the grief 
with which he turned from the nursery window 
and wept bitterly ; and he remembered how the 
sympathizing maidens, distressed at his sorrow, 
beguiled him day by day with the promise that 
his dear mother would soon return again, and how 
for a long time he believed what he so ardently 
wished, and from day to day was disappointed, till 
the expectation and the grief wore out together. 

" Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, 
Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent, 
I learned, at last, submission to my lot, 
But though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot." 

Had C owner's mother, so gentle, so affectionate, 



CHILDHOOD OF COWPER, 13 

so careful, been spared to him, his course in life 
would have been very different ; but perhaps the 
poetical peculiarities of his nature would never 
have been so exquisitely developed. The crush- 
ing of the flower, which was to yield so precious 
and perpetual a fragrance, began in childhood. 
From the care and gentleness of such a mother, 
and the quiet of an English rural home so peaceful, 
so like an earthly paradise, the sensitive, delicate 
child was immediately passed to the discipline of 
a boarding-school. This would have been a deso- 
late and cruel change at best ; but to Cowper, in 
this case, it was terrible, for there was in the 
school a brute pupil of fifteen years of age, who 
made himself the tyrant of the younger boys with 
unheard-of persecutions, and for two years the 
sorrowful and shrinking child was the peculiar 
subject of this wretch's tyranny and cruelty, until, 
the habits of the villain being discovered, he was 
expelled from the school. Cowper also was re- 
leased, and for a couple of years was placed in the 
family of an eminent oculist, to be treated for a 
complaint threatening his eyesight. From that 
care and discipline he was removed, at the age of 
ten, and was placed at Westminster, where seven 
of the most important years of his life were passed 
in the study of the classics, till he was seventeen. 
His taste was cultivated, and his mind richly 
stored by these years of classical discipline, but 



14 CHILDHOOD OF COWPER. 

his character was not resolutely developed, and 
some of the influences thrown upon it were evil. 

Southey has noted as a fact, that in Cowper's 
days there were together at the Westminster 
School more youths of distinguished talent than 
ever at any other time were cotemporaries there. 
Some of them were afterward his intimate com- 
panions in the pursuits of literature, while profess- 
edly engaged in the study of the law. Coleman, 
the play-writer, was one, whose character, along 
with that of Lord Thurlow, Cowper drew with 
some severity, when they had both unkindly neg- 
lected the poet, on his sending to them the first 
fruits of his poetical genius. 



"Thy schoolfellow, and partner of thy plays, 
"When Nichol swung the birch, and twined the bays." 



In regard to the intimacies of his school-days, 
Cowper long afterward expressed himself to his 
friend Mr. Unwin, "I find such friendships, though 
warm enough in their commencement, surprisingly 
liable to extinction, and of seven or eight, whom I 
had selected for intimates, out of about three hun- 
dred, in ten years' time not one was left me." He 
told the same friend that on his quitting West- 
minster, he valued a man according to his pro- 
ficiency and taste in classical literature, and had 
the meanest opinion of all other accomplishments 



CHILDHOOD OF COWPEB. 15 

unaccompanied by that, but that he had lived to 
see the vanity of what he had made his pride, and 
to find that all this time he had spent in painting 
a piece of wood that had no life in it, and when 
he began to think indeed, he found himself in pos- 
session of many baubles, but not one grain of 
solidity in all his treasures. Yet what precious 
treasures did they prove, when at length, imbued 
with the sweetest spirit of piety, they were wrought 
into the most imperishable forms of English litera- 
ture. Cowper's English style, like Goldsmith's, 
seemed part of the intuitive elements of his ge- 
nius ; it was not formed by his classical discipline 
at Westminster, but grew, as an apple-blossom 
grows out of life, by the law of life ; for Cowper 
has stated in his letters some curious facts as to 
the general neglect of English in a school given to 
Latin and Greek. The very same lad, he said, 
was often commended for his Latin, who deserved 
to be whipped for his English, and not one in fifty 
of those who passed through Westminster and 
Eton, arrived at any remarkable proficiency in 
speaking and writing their own mother tongue. 

With merry playmates at Westminster, Cowper 
must have enjoyed many hours, notwithstanding 
all that he is said to have suffered, both there and 
at the earliest scene of his school-trials. Hayley 
tells us that Cowper had " been frequently heard 
to lament the persecution he sustained in his child- 



16 CHILDHOOD OF COWPER. 

ish years, from the cruelty of his school-fellows in 
the two scenes of his education. His own forci- 
ble expression represented him at Westminster as 
not daring to raise his eye above the shoe-buckle 
of the elder boys, who were too apt to tyrannize 
over his gentle spirit." Cowper's own description 
of this misery refers only to his experience at the 
school for children in Hertfordshire. But Hayley 
seems to write from the remembrance of Cowper's 
conversation, and describes the same torment as 
endured in some degree at Westminster. There 
can be no doubt that in such treatment of a mind 
and heart so tenderly sensitive, so exquisitely deli- 
cate, there was gathering, even at the earliest 
period, that cloud, at first no bigger than a man's 
hand, which was at length to overshadow his 
whole being with the blackness of a settled mad- 
ness and despair. 

The whole of his early education was certainly, 
in some respects, most unfortunate. Of his situa- 
tion in the household of the surgeon and oculist, 
where he went at eight years of age for medical 
discipline, connected with the system of education 
afterward pursued, he speaks himself, in brief 
terms, as follows : "I continued two years in this 
family, where religion was neither known nor prac- 
ticed, and from thence was dispatched to West- 
minster. Whatever seeds of religion I might carry 
thither, before my seven years' apprenticeship to 



CHILDHOOD OF C0WPE8. 17 

the classics were expired, were all marred and cor- 
rupted. The duty of the schoolboy swallowed up 
every other ; and I acquired Latin and Greek at 
the expense of knowledge much more important." 
He speaks in this connection, of some early casual 
impressions in regard to his own mortality, in- 
creased by intimations of a consumptive habit, 
and attended with a lowness of spirits uncommon 
at such an age. 

Certainly, it were a sufficient cause for unhappi- 
ness, not imaginary nor temporary, to be banished 
at so tender an age as Cowper was from so dear a 
home as his, and thrown upon the care of strang- 
ers in a boarding-house ; and four years, from the 
age of six to ten, spent so unhappily, are reason 
enough for that "uncommon lowness of spirits/' 
Cowper was thrown upon himself too early, and 
with too entire an absence of any dear personal 
guide or friend, for the habit of self-reliance to 
grow out of such discipline. De Quincey, in some 
reference to the years of his childhood says, " By 
temperament, and through natural dedication to 
despondency; I felt resting upon me always too 
deep and gloomy a sense of obscure duties, at- 
tached to life, that I never should be able to ful- 
fill ; a burden which I could not carry, and which 
yet I did not know how to throw off." This is a very 
common experience, in boys of a reflective nature, 
though not always remembered and defined with 



18 CHILDHOOD OF COWPER. 

so much distinctness. Suppose it were increased 
to a morbid degree by circumstances, it might 
easily become a predisposing cause of permanent 
gloom assuming the type of madness. And this 
feeling, at a later period, was, absolutely, one of 
the exasperating causes of Cowper's insanity. If 
another human being could have been found to 
take the responsibility of life upon himself, Cow- 
per's mind would have been at ease, and no catas- 
trophe of madness would have happened. But, 
then, for aught we can see, his conscience would 
have remained at ease, also, and he never would 
have been awakened from the careless dreamings 
of an indolent, gay, social existence, as attractive, 
when its habit was once formed, as it was useless, 
but ruinous for his nobler and better nature. He 
was rudely and awfully thrown upon himself, and 
found himself the greatest of all burdens that the 
mind could bear ; yet not till despair came, abso- 
lute despair, was he thrown upon his Saviour, and 
not till then did he find rest. 

He has described his singular religious indiffer- 
ence at the age of fourteen, when seized with the 
small-pox, and presumed to be but a step from 
death. And it was singular, for that is an age 
when, in the prospect of death, conscience is ordi- 
narily much alarmed, and there is great anxiety, 
for the heart has not been hardened. But Cowper 
says, " Though I was severely handled by this dis- 



CHILDHOOD OF COWPER. 19 

ease, and in imminent danger, yet neither in the 
course of it, nor during my recovery, had I any 
sentiments of contrition, any thought of God or 
eternity/' Cowper goes still further in the record 
against his boyish days, the review, from an ad- 
vanced and holy post of observation, of the evil 
habits he was then contracting. He says he was 
hardly raised from his bed of pain and sickness 
before the love of sin became stronger than ever, 
and the devil seemed rather to have gained than 
lost an advantage over him. " By this time," he 
says, "that is, about the age of fourteen, I be- 
came such an adept in the infernal art of lying 
that I was seldom guilty of a fault for which I 
could not invent an apology capable of deceiving 
the wisest. These, I know, are called schoolboys' 
tricks ; but a total depravity of principle, and the 
work of the father of lies, are universally at the 
bottom of them/' 

Southey sets this down as a species of Protestant 
exaggerated self-condemnation, either hypocritical 
or enthusiastic, either to deceive others, or to pro- 
mote the cause of religion by magnifying the mira- 
cle of one's own conversion. It is no great com- 
pliment to the character of Cowper, the Christian 
and the poet, to intimate that he would delibe- 
rately and knowingly exaggerate the sins and 
follies of his childhood, even for the purpose of 
magnifying a miracle. It is no great compliment 



20 CHILDHOOD OF COWPER. 

to his truthfulness to intimate that he would en- 
deavor to set forth the miracle of his own conver- 
sion as greater than it really was. Southey thinks 
that Cowper imposed upon himself, when accusing 
himself as a juvenile proficient in the infernal art 
of lying, in a far greater degree than he had ever 
imposed upon an usher ; and he adds, contrary to 
all experience, " that lying is certainly not one of 
those vices which are either acquired or fostered 
at a public school." 

But how could Cowper, as a truthful man, have 
accused himself of lying in his childhood if he had 
not remembered and known that he had been 
guilty of that sin ? How could he impose upon 
himself with such a mere imagination, when he 
was sitting down to compose a severely truthful 
history ? How, above all, could he deliberately 
attempt to impose upon others, or to record for 
others' instruction, as a definite well-known point 
in his own early life and character, what was noth- 
ing better than a slander against himself ? It is 
a most injurious and humiliating argument by 
which Southey, in order to avert the charge of de- 
pravity from Cowper's youth, fastens that of de- 
ception upon Cowper's Christian manhood. And 
yet Southey acknowledges that " Cowper was not 
one of those persons who gratify their spiritual 
pride by representing themselves as the vilest of sin- 
ners." The secret of the strange apology is in the 



CHILDHOOD OF COWPER, 21 

next sentence, in which Southey, because it is cer- 
tain that Cowper had been an inoffensive gentle 
boy, discards as not to be received in evidence of 
any such evil habit as that of falsehood, " what- 
ever he, in Ms deplorable state of mind, may have 
said or thought of his own childhood." 

Now it can hardly be credited that the state of 
mind which Southey here sets down as deplorable, 
when Cowper penned his own exquisitely beautiful 
and affecting memoirs, and gave the history of his 
childhood, was the calmest, brightest, serenest, most 
spiritual and heavenly period and mood of his whole 
life ; a state of mind, in which the presence of his 
Saviour was a light of glory and of joy, and the 
very atmosphere of his heart was as the air of 
heaven. It was so far from deplorable for himself, 
that he was always in the enjoyment of the sweet- 
est social and Christian communion, and in the 
almost uninterrupted exercise of prayer and praise. 
And so far from melancholy to others, that the 
very sight of a creature so exalted in spiritual 
happiness was full of interest and delight ; for he 
looked on all around him with celestial love, and 
he judged all things with a serene, unbiassed spir- 
itual judgment, neither censorious, nor harsh, nor 
gloomy, but sweetly radiant with the beauty of that 
happiness, through which every thought was trans- 
mitted. All forms of opinion, all sentences on his 
past life, and anticipations of his future, flew freely 



22 CHILDHOOD OF COWPER, 

forth, like birds of Paradise, through an avenue of 
peace and joy, bearing fragrance from the trees of 
life on either side upon their wings. It was the 
experience of " the peace of God that passeth all 
understanding, keeping both heart and mind 
through Christ Jesus." 

And yet, Southey had the hardihood to speak 
of Cowper, while in the experience of such religious 
feeling and enjoyment, as "in his deplorable state 
of mind/' and could say of him that " he regarded 
with a diseased mind his own nature and the 
course of human life," when he referred to the ab- 
sence of religion in his own childhood. It is in 
the same mood that Southey speaks of Cowper's 
interesting account of himself as " his melancholy 
memoirs." Eepeatedly Southey speaks of the 
"exaggerated language" of these memoirs in re- 
gard to their description of the native evil of the 
human heart, and of the total want of religion in 
Cowper's own heart before his conversion. In di- 
rect contradiction to Cowper's own solemn affirma- 
tions of what he remembered in regard to his own 
character and condition in his childhood and youth, 
Southey says, " He had no cause, real or imaginary, 
for regret or self-reproach. He was exactly one 
of those boys who choose for themselves the good 
that may be gained at a public school, and eschew 
the evil, being preserved from it by their good in- 
stincts, or by the influence of virtuous principles 



CHILDHOOD OF COWPEB. 23 

inculcated in childhood/' Whose testimony, in 
such a case, is to be believed ? — that of the author 
of the autobiography, speaking of himself, and 
speaking as a Christian, from a heart full of the 
emotions of heavenly gratitude and praise, or that 
of the biographer, contradicting the autobiography, 
and declaring that he knows more about Cowper's 
childhood than Cowper knew himself, and can de- 
scribe more truthfully than Cowper has done, the 
early life of the poet ? 

The passage in which Cowper charges upon his 
youthful character and years the habit of falsehood, 
is omitted from the autobiography in some of the 
editions of the poet's life and writings. It is some- 
what altered even by G-rimshawe. And, indeed, it 
is very natural to wish that there had been no 
occasion for writing it. But we are not sitting in 
court, where the counsel and the judge will not 
admit any thing from the prisoner himself, against 
himself, to go to the jury. Every word is precious. 
The " Jerusalem sinner," the happy, forgiven, re- 
joicing saint in Christ Jesus, was drawing up as 
truthful an account as he could give of his former 
and his present self ; of his character and habits 
as a boy and a man, without grace, and of the 
great and mighty change wrought in him by 
grace ; and we can not but esteem it a false and 
ill-judged delicacy, which would suppress, or deny 
and contradict such a passage as this, out of a 



24 CHILDHOOD OF COWPER. 

supposed regard to the poet's memory. One might 
as well and as wisely suppress John Newton's ac- 
count of his manner of life while engaged in slave- 
trading, together with his profaneness and the vices 
of his character. 

The truth is, we would like to see, in the 
review of Cowper's early life, whatever Cowper 
himself saw, and judged it for the glory of God 
that others also should see and remark upon. If 
he had fallen into evil habits, his being rescued 
from them by Divine grace could not be known 
unless they were known. It is more to the glory 
of God, than it is to the disgrace of the sinner, 
that they should be known in every case in which 
the grace of God is so triumphant. The greater 
the guilt, the greater the grace and glory of salva- 
tion. "Howbeit," says Paul, "for this cause I 
obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ 
might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern 
to them which should hereafter believe on Him to 
life everlasting." Paul says that God called him 
and forgave him, not because his sins were small 
and few, but many and great, that he might give 
point and power to that " faithful saying and wor- 
thy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into 
the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." 
And David in his very prayer, " For Thy name's 
sake pardon mine iniquity, for it is great," 
expresses the same wondrous theology, wondrous 



CHILDHOOD OF COWPER. 25 

and always new in the world, for its amazing 
mercy. 

Let then sin have its full merit, as well as grace ; 
justice to the one is but justice to the other. ISTo 
extenuation of human offenses, whether in hoy- 
hood or manhood, can glorify God, but the man- 
ifestation of God's glory most powerfully sets off 
the baseness of every kind of sin, in every age and 
place. Set down, if you please, those equivoca- 
tions, deceits, concealments, and false excuses, 
which Cowper rudely describes as the infernal art 
of lying ; set them down as mere harmless, boyish 
tricks and stratagems ; yet they show the corrupt- 
ing power of evil example in a public school, even 
upon a nature constitutionally so frank and indis- 
posed to falsehood as the youthful Cowper's. His 
character as yet, while at school, was not firm, but 
irresolute and yielding, and he had no religious 
principles or habits to bear him through tempta- 
tion unharmed. 

2 



CHAPTER II. 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND PRIVATE TUITION. — " THE TIROCINIUM. " — COW- 
PER'S EXPERIENCE AT WESTMINSTER. — COWPER'S HABITS WHILE 
A STUDENT-AT-LAW. — HIS RESIDENCE IN THE TEMPLE. — HIS CON- 
VIVIAL AND LITERARY COMPANIONS. 

An admirable judge of English schools in his 
day, Mr. De Quincey, has expressed the opinion 
that Cowper was far from doing justice to the 
great public schools of the kingdom in his " Tiro- 
cinium/' or review of the school discipline. He 
affirms that Cowper was disqualified, by delicacy 
of temperament, for reaping the benefit from such 
a warfare, and having suffered too much in his 
own Westminster experience, he could not judge 
the great public schools from an impartial station ; 
"but I, w continues he, " though ill enough adapted 
to an atmosphere so stormy, yet having tried both 
classes of schools, public and private, am com- 
pelled, in mere conscience, to give my vote (and if 
I had a thousand votes, to give all my votes) for 
the former." 

So, too, as between the public and private schools 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 27 

that Cowper had attended, the proof in his expe- 
rience was in favor of the former, for he suffered 
much more at the private school than he did at 
the public. But this by no means invalidates his 
testimony as to the essential evils of the latter. 
And a system of education which proves good 
only for the rougher and more rugged natures and 
constitutions, but injurious for the shrinking, the 
sensitive, the gentle and refined, and for the sen- 
sibilities of exquisite genius hidden in its child- 
hood, can not, on the whole, be the best. Cowper, 
however, was not disqualified, either by excessive 
delicacy of temperament or delicacy of constitu- 
tion, for the rough-and-tumble even of a town 
school ; it was the moral influences that he com- 
mented upon with such just and graphic severity in 
" The Tirocinium/' which is a poem recommending 
private tuition in preference to an education in 
any public school whatever. Cowper delighted in 
the athletic sports of boyhood, and was foremost 
in them for skill and energy, so that thus far, at 
least, it was nothing in his own idiosyncracies that 
created the prejudice, or unfitted him to bear an 
impartial testimony. But what he saw in others 
and knew from experience, of the injurious deso- 
lating moral effect, the mining and sapping of re- 
ligious principle, if such principle had been taught 
in early childhood, the precocious instruction in 
fashionable vices, the exclusion or dishonor of re- 



28 THE MORALITIES 

ligious truth and a religious example, the forming 
and fixing of habits and a character that, what- 
ever might be the sphere molded of hereditary 
fortune here, could prepare the being for nothing 
but misery hereafter ; — these are the things pre- 
sented with such caustic satire, and at the same 
time affectionate and solemn warning in this admi- 
rable poem. The reader of it knowing that Cow- 
per drew his description from reality, and that he 
did not exaggerate nor set down any thing in mal- 
ice, can not wonder at the feelings of the poet, nor 
at his calling the public schools menageries. 

" "What cause can move us (knowing as we must, 
That these menageries all fail their trust) 
To send our sons to scout and scamper there, 
"While colts and puppies cost us so much care I" 

How beautiful, how impressive, is the opening 
of that poem, and the argument, from which the 
writer deduces the rule and foundation of its criti- 



That we are bound to cast the minds of youth 
Betimes into the mold of heavenly truth, 
That, taught of God, they may indeed be wise, 
Nor, ignorantly wand'ring, miss the skies." 



From the creation, the chain of reasoning pro- 
ceeds to man, placed by its Author as its intelli- 
gent, majestic head, the state, the splendor, and 



OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 29 

the throne being an intellectual kingdom. And 
thus intelligent, and standing as the crown of such 
a world, the wildest scorner of the laws of his 
Maker may, in a sober moment, find time to pause 
and to ask himself, why so framed and placed in 
such a position, so fearfully and wonderfully made ? 
If only to see and feel by the light of reason, and 
with an aching heart, the contradiction, chaos, and 
fury of passions which reason can indeed condemn, 
but can bring no force to conquer them ; if, impo- 
tent and self-wretched in this world, there is here 
no cure : and if, when this demonstration of folly, 
guilt, and helplessness is at an end, there is noth- 
ing better beyond, or nothing at all ; then, of all 
the objects and creatures of this world, man stands 
self-impeached, though at the head of creation, 
the creature of least worth. 



And, useless while he lives, and when he dies, 
Brings into doubt the wisdom of the skies ; 
"What none could reverence, all might justly blame, 
And man would breathe but for his Maker's shame." 



But it is perfectly plain that if all the objects of 
the universe show forth the glory of the Maker, 
fulfilling some wise and obvious purpose, and 
demonstrating a divine intelligence and goodness, 
certainly not Divine unless both good and intelli- 
gent, then he to whom is given or appointed the 
dominion over such a world, has been invested 



30 THE M ORALITIES 

with faculties and powers to fill that station for 
the same great purpose, and stands arrayed in his 
kingship of intelligence and power, that he may 
reflect, not less than earth, sea, and air, the attri- 
butes of his Creator. 

" That first or last, hereafter, if not here, 
He too might make his Author's wisdom clear ; 
Praise Him on earth, or, obstinately dumb, 
Suffer His justice in a world to come." 

Such is the truly sublime argument with which 
Cowper introduces his rugged and profoundly sa- 
tirical " Keview of Schools." The close of it reminds 
the reader of a passage in Coleridge's " Statesman's 
Manual," by which he means the Bible, with its les- 
sons of God's wisdom for man's guidance. " The 
root is never detached from the ground. It is God 
every where : and all creatures conform to His 
decrees, the righteous by performance of the law, 
the disobedient by the sufferance of the penalty!' 
If such the destiny of man, then, exclaim both 
poets, what combined madness and dishonesty to 
set up any system of public education of which 
the end is not man's highest interest, and the 
means God's truth ! 

Now the truths (Cowper continues) found out 
only with great pains by men of great learning, 
are not always as important as they are dear- 
bought. 



OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 31 

" But truths on which depends our main concern, 
That 'tis our shame and misery not to learn, 
Shine by the side of every path we tread 
"With such a luster, he that runs may read." 

Here are verses from which Wordsworth might 
have drawn his lines : 



The primal duties shine aloft like stars, 

The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, 

Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers." 



But the distinction between the two passages is 
that between the two poets, the one comparatively 
artificial and elaborately philosophic, even though 
full of nature and feeling, the other the poet of 
rural simplicity, of piety, of Scripture truth, strong, 
homely, natural thought, deep feeling and common 
sense. Both are great poets ; but no passage can 
be turned into prose from Wordsworth's pages 
that shall exhibit such a compact argument of 
plain, intelligible, strong thought, with a mighty 
and solemn conclusion, befitting and crowning its 
grandeur, as is to be found in the three opening 
paragraphs of Cowper's " Tirocinium, or a Keview 
of Schools." 

Southey speaks of the destructive influence of a 
public education upon those devotional habits 
which in a sweet Christian household may have 
been learned at home ; and he says that nothing 
which is not intentionally profane can be more ir~ 



32 THE MORALITIES 

religious than the forms of religion, which are 
observed at such a school as that at Westminster ; 
and that the attendance of schoolboys in a pack at 
public worship is worse than perfunctory. Yet the 
master at Westminster in Cowper's time, as named 
in the Valediction, was Dr. Nichols, apparently 
a conscientious man ; and Cowper afterward re- 
marked upon the. pains he took to prepare the 
boys for confirmation, acquitting himself like one 
who had a deep sense of the importance of his 
work. Then, for the first time, Cowper says he 
attempted to pray in secret ; but being little ac- 
customed to that exercise of the heart, and having 
very childish notions of religion, he found it a dif- 
ficult and painful task, and was even then fright- 
ened at his own insensibility. " This difficulty," 
says he, " though it did not subdue my good pur- 
poses till the ceremony of confirmation was passed, 
soon after entirely conquered them. I relapsed 
into a total forgetfulness of God, with all the dis- 
advantages of being the more hardened for being 
softened to no purpose." Oh, if there could have 
been at this time some kind, affectionate Christian 
teacher and friend, to lead the awakened, trem- 
bling, thoughtful boy to the Saviour, what years 
of agony and darkness might not have been pre- 
vented! 

At Westminster, Cowper was in high favor with 
his master, from whom he received rewards for his 



OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 33 

poetical Latin exercises, and among the boys lie 
excelled at foot-ball and cricket. Neither in mind 
nor body, therefore, was he idle ; and from one of 
his later letters in the review of this early period, 
we learn that while at Westminster he was cured 
of that alarming disorder in the eyes, for which he 
had been two years in the house of a renowned 
oculist, but to no good purpose. From thence he 
says he went to Westminster School, where, at the 
age of fourteen, the small-pox seized him, and 
proved the better oculist of the two, for it deliv- 
ered him from all the inflammations to which he 
had been subject. He has also informed us that 
at the age of fourteen he first tried his hand at 
English verse, in a translation of one of the elegies 
of Tibullus. From that time Hayley says he had 
reason to believe that Cowper frequently applied 
himself to poetical efforts ; but the earliest pre- 
served on record is the piece on finding the heel 
of a shoe, which he wrote at Bath in 1748, about 
a year before he left Westminster. It was in 
blank verse, and may be regarded as shadowing 
forth, through an interval of near forty years, some 
of the admirable native characteristics of the future 
poet of " The Task." 

At the age of eighteen, Cowper himself says 

that he left Westminster, a good grammarian, but 

as ignorant of religion as the satchel at his back. 

He then spent nine months at home, and after 

2* 



34 LAW STUDIES IN 

some anxious deliberation, which such a step must 
have cost him, the profession of the law was fixed 
upon as the path of his future life, and he was ar- 
ticled with Mr. Chapman, an attorney, for three 
years. It was a choice most unsuited to his men- 
tal constitution, and his tastes and habits ; and 
had it not been so, the poetical development of 
his genius must have been prevented by the ab- 
sorption of his whole being in legal studies and 
pursuits. A genuine poet would have been sacri- 
ficed for the very common growth of an indifferent 
lawyer ; for by no possibility could Cowper have 
ever risen to eminence in that profession : at the 
uttermost he would but amiably have adorned the 
gift of some friendly professional sinecure. 

In the attorney's office, Cowper had for a fellow- 
clerk the celebrated Thurlow, afterward lord-chan- 
cellor. At a later period, Cowper wrote to Lady 
Hesketh in reference to the tenor of his life in 
that three years' probation of it, that he and 
Thurlow were employed " from morning till night 
in giggling and making giggle/' instead of studying 
law. In his own memoir of himself he says that 
he might have lived and died without seeing or 
hearing any thing that might remind him of one 
single Christian duty, had it not been that he was 
at liberty to spend his leisure time (which, he says, 
was well-nigh all my time) at his aunt's in South- 
ampton Row. " By this means I had opportunity 



THE MIDDLE T E ir PIE, g J 

of seeing the inside of a church, whither I went 
with the family on Sundays, and which, probably, 
I should otherwise never have seen." 

Cowper was twenty-one years of age when he 
left the attorney's office, and took rooms in the 
Middle Temple to continue his studies, in a man- 
ner, as he says, complete master of himself. And 
here commences the profoundly interesting and 
instructive account by himself of the development 
of his own character, and the change of his own 
being from carelessness to despondency, and from 
despondency to despair, madness, and attempted 
suicide ; from suicide, frustrated by the providen- 
tial mercy of God, he advanced to the deepest con- 
viction of guilt, with an apprehension of the Divine 
vengeance, carried for months almost to the ex- 
treme of despair ; from that time he was brought, 
by the wonderful grace of God, to a simple, hum- 
ble faith in the Lord Jesus, a clear, joyful, exper- 
imental understanding and appreciation of the 
conditions of salvation through his blood, and a 
profound peace and happiness in believing. 

At his residence in the Temple began the first 
experience of that terrible despondency of soul, 
which at length grew into an enshrouding mental 
and physical disease, broken only by the grave. 
Day and night he describes himself under this de- 
jection of spirits, as being upon the rack, lying 
down in horror, and rising up in despair. He lost 



3G G L M AND G A Y E T Y . 

all relish even for his classical studies ; and singu- 
larly enough, the only book in which he took any 
delight was a volume of Herbert's poems, which 
he then first met with, and pored over him all 
day long. After nearly a year spent in this 
wretched disquietude, without any relief, he at 
length betook himself to prayer, that is, he com- 
posed what he calls a set of prayers, and made 
frequent use of them. About the same time, 
spending several months with friends at South- 
ampton, the cloud of insupportable gloom was 
very suddenly and unexpectedly removed from his 
soul while gazing at the lovely scenery. The de- 
liverance thus experienced, which at first he as- 
cribed to God's merciful answer to his prayers, he 
soon concluded to have been owing to nothing but 
a change of season and the amusing varieties of 
the place ; and he consequently argued that noth- 
ing but a continued circle of diversions and indulg- 
ence of appetite could secure him from a relapse. 
Acting on this principle, as soon as he returned to 
London he burned his prayers, and he says that 
inasmuch as they had been a mere prepared form, 
away with them went all his thoughts of devotion 
and of dependence upon God his Saviour. 

Twelve years were spent in this manner, with 
companions and associates who, like himself, were 
(in his own description) professed Christians, or 
else professed infidels, in what Cowper calls an 



GLOOM A N D GAYETY. 87 

uninterrupted course of sinful indulgence. It is 
not necessary to exaggerate the meaning of this 
expression to all the intensity it would bear ; on 
the contrary, this would be false and unjust. To 
the awakened conscience and the smitten heart, 
beneath the sense of Grod's holiness, the uninter- 
rupted pursuit of worldly enjoyment, though in 
the most moral style, without grossness, and in the 
best possible taste and dignity, would appear in 
reality an uninterrupted course of sinful indulg- 
ence. There may be the supreme worship of self, 
and a heart wholly unchanged by grace, even in 
connection with the most irreproachable morality. 
We suppose that Cowper's life was, briefly, that of 
a gay, careless man, a man of the world ; and he 
declares that he obtained at length so complete a 
victory over his conscience that all remonstrances 
from that quarter were vain, and in a manner si- 
lenced. Yet, in the company of deists, when he 
heard the Gospel blasphemed, he never failed to 
assert the truth of it with much vehemence, and 
was sometimes employed, when half intoxicated, 
in vindicating the truth of Scripture. A deistical 
friend, on one such occasion, answered his argu- 
ments by declaring that if what he said was true 
then he was certainly damned by his own showing 
and choosing. 

In 1754, at the age of twenty-three, with such 
habits begun, he was admitted to the bar, and in 



38 RESIDENCE IN THE TEMPLE. 

1756 suffered the loss of his father ; an affliction 
of which he does not once speak in his memoirs of 
himself, nor, singularly enough, do we ever find 
him adverting to it in any of his letters, save only 
on one occasion, in a letter to his friend Mr. Kose, 
in 1787. " A sensible mind can not do violence 
even to a local attachment, without much pain. 
When my father died, I was young, too young to 
have reflected much. He was rector of Berkham- 
stead, and there I was born. It had never oc- 
curred to me that a parson has no fee-simple in 
the house and glebe he occupies. There was nei- 
ther tree, nor gate, nor stile, in all that country, 
to which I did not feel a relation, and the house 
itself I preferred to a palace. I was sent for from 
London to attend him in his last illness, and he 
died just before I arrived. Then, and not till 
then, I felt for the first time that I and my native 
place were disunited forever. I sighed a long 
adieu to fields and woods, from which I once 
thought I should never be parted, and was at no 
time so sensible of their beauties as just when I 
left them all behind me, to return no more." 

Three years afterward he removed to the Inner 
Temple, and at the age of twenty-eight was made 
Commissioner of Bankrupts. He was at this time 
strongly attached to one of his cousins, a most in- 
telligent, interesting, and lovely person, Miss The- 
odora Cowper, whom he would have married, for 



RESIDENCE IN THE TEMPLE. 39 

her own affections were as deeply concerned as 
his ; but the father absolutely refused his consent 
on account of their relationship. It was a deep, 
painful, disastrous disappointment, and unques- 
tionably increased for a season his constitutional 
tendency to gloom and depression. He expressed 
his feelings in some affecting verses, which were 
sent to Lady Hesketh, the sister of the young 
lady whom he loved. 

During his twelve years' residence in the Tem- 
ple, he was member of a club consisting of 
several literary gentlemen, among whom were 
Thornton, Colman, Lloyd, and Joseph Hill, Esq., 
Cowper's constant correspondent for thirty years. 
Wilkes and Churchill, whose vigorous poetry Cow- 
per admired, were of the same circle of associates. 
The character and life of some of these men of 
genius have been fitly characterized in three words, 
thoughtless extravagance and dissipation. Lloyd 
died, the victim of his own excesses, at the early 
age of thirty-one years. Colman, after an im- 
moral life, died in a lunatic asylum. Such might 
have been Cowper's fate, had not the mercy of 
Divine providence and grace rescued him from a 
participation in such ruin. He had mixed with 
such companions on equal terms, Southey has re- 
marked, till a time of life in which habits take so 
strong a hold that they are not easily cast off. 
The period of his early intimacy with Lloyd is 



40 RESIDENCE IN THE TEMPLE. 

marked by a poetical epistle from Cowper to his 
friend in 1754, in which there occurs a reference 
to his own habitual depression of spirits, in lines 
that are to be marked as connected with the speedy 
development of his disorder. He remarks that he 
did not design, in writing verse, to rob his friend 
of his birthright to the inheritance, undivided, of 
Prior's easy jingle, nor to show his own genius or 
wit, possessing neither. Yet both were proved, 
and some of the strongest characteristics of the 
future poet are visible. 

" 'Tis not with either of these views 
That I presume to address the muse, 
But to divert a fierce banditti 
(Sworn foes to every thing that 's witty) 
That with a black, infernal train, 
Make cruel inroads in my brain, 
And daily threaten to drive thence 
My little garrison of sense. 
The fierce banditti that I mean 
Are gloomy thoughts, led on by spleen." 

The deepening of this depression into almost hor- 
ror and despair is marked in his own memoirs of 
himself, as well as the means he took to dissipate 
the gloom. He seems to have been for years suc- 
cessful in removing it, or at least keeping it at 
arm's length, and had it gone no further, it might 
have proved his irremediable ruin by continuing 
him in the society of his dissipated companions 
too long and late for any recovery. But it pleased 



RESIDENCE IN THE TEMPLE. 41 

God that it should be permitted to deepen into 
absolute frenzy; and despair and suicide were 
made the providential angels that snatched Cow- 
per from destruction. 



CHAPTER III. 

STATE OF RELIGION IN ENGLAND AT THE TIME OP COWPER'S CON- 
VERSION. — LADY HUNTINGDON. — MR. MADAN. — LORD BOLING- 
BROKE. — DR. STONEHOUSE. — DR. COTTON. — ROMAINE. — VENN. — 
SOME REMARKABLE INSTANCES OP GRACE. 

The year 1762 ; when Cowper was first under 
the cloud and passed through the sea, introductory 
to his being baptized, not unto Moses but into 
Christ, may be taken as the center of a most re- 
markable religious, if not literary period. We 
prefer it for a starting-point and vision of survey, 
to the year of the half century, mainly because it 
was nearer to the central development of the great 
religious awakening and revival in England, in 
which the revered and beloved Lady Huntingdon 
occupies a position so vital and important, so hon- 
ored and admired. And Cowper's conversion was 
one of the fruits of that revival, one of the precious 
ingatherings to the fold of the Eedeemer, under 
that same general dispensation of the Spirit under 
which Newton and Scott, Whitefield and Wesley, 
were made instruments of such amazing power and 
brightness in advancing the kingdom of God. 



REV. MARTIN M A D A N . 43 

Cowper's afflictions first brought him within reach 
of one of the eddies, as it were, of this mighty 
movement, in presenting him as the subject of deep 
spiritual distress to the Eev. Martin Madan for 
sympathy and guidance. Mr. Madan was a rela- 
tive of Cowper, being the eldest son of Colonel 
Madan, who married the daughter of Judge Cow- 
per, the brother of the lord-chancellor. Mr. 
Madan was one of Lady Huntingdon's preachers, 
so called, that is, occupying one of the chapels 
founded by that woman of such enlarged intelli- 
gence and devoted and fearless piety. Cowperhad 
known him at an earlier period, but regarded him 
in the light in which all that circle of evangelical 
disciples of Christ were esteemed by the circle of 
aristocracy, wealth, and fashion, to which the poet 
by birth belonged, that is, as a misguided enthu- 
siast. Mr. Madan had been educated in the study 
of the law, but being convinced of his condition as 
a lost sinner, and brought to a knowledge of the 
grace of the Gospel, became a preacher of Christ 
crucified, and was the founder and first chaplain of 
the Lock Hospital, a situation which Thomas 
Scott, the commentator and author of " The Force 
of Truth," afterward filled for a season. 

Mr. Madan' s conversion took place about ten 
years before Cowper's, and Cowper regarded him, 
during those years, as one of the enthusiasts, in 
consequence. The preaching of Wesley and the 



44 madan's conversion. 

Methodists was then attracting crowds in London, 
and one evening Mr. Maclan, in the midst of a gay 
and careless circle at a coffee-house, was dispatched 
by his companions to go and hear Wesley, who was 
preaching that evening in the neighborhood, and 
then to come back and " take him off" for their 
amusement. He entered heartily into the joke, 
but it happened that just as he took his seat in the 
chapel with that purpose, Wesley was repeating 
his text, Prepare to meet thy God, with an intens- 
ity of solemnity and awe that arrested Madan's 
conscience at the outset. The impression deepened 
as Wesley went on with his rousing and fervent 
appeals on the destiny of the soul and the necessity 
of repentance ; and when Madan returned to the 
coffee-house, and was asked by his laughing com- 
panions if he had taken off the old Methodist, all 
the answer he could make was, " No, gentlemen, 
but he has taken me off." He then left the gay 
circle and never returned to it, but was soon or- 
dained a minister of the Church of England, and 
preached his first sermon to a great crowd of curious, 
wondering listeners of all classes in All-hallows 
Church, Lombard-street. He was a heart-felt 
Christian and an able preacher, and thus was pre- 
pared the first Evangelist who was to meet Cowper 
when half distracted and trembling under the over- 
hanging crags and flashes of Sinai. So he met 
him, and preached Christ to his wounded spirit, 



MADAN AND COWPER. 45 

then upon the verge of madness ; and immediately 
after that consolation, which seemed a visible prep- 
aration from heaven for the storm he was to en- 
counter, Cowper passed into the gloom of utter 
insanity and despair. It was almost like putting 
a chronometer into the cabin of a vessel, when 
there were none on board of sufficient intelligence 
to consult it ; but who can tell how far the first 
gleam of light, the first word of mercy, the first 
revelation of the Gospel, may have wrought in 
Cowper's heart, even during the dethronement of 
reason, and among his wandering thoughts pre- 
pared him afterward to lay hold on the hope set 
before him ? 

In a letter written to his cousin, Mrs. Cowper, 
the sister of Martin Madan, soon after Cowper had 
taken up his residence in the family of the Unwins, 
he described his feelings in regard to Mr. Madan, 
contrasting them with what they had been formerly. 
" Your brother Martin has been very kind to me, 
having written to me twice in a style which, though 
it was once irksome to me, to say the least, I now 
know how to value. I pray God to forgive me the 
many light things I have both said and thought 
of him and his labors. Hereafter I shall consider 
him as a burning and shining light, and as one of 
those who, having turned many to righteousness, 
shall shine hereafter as the stars forever and ever." 

It was Mr. Madan by whom the instructive 



46 LORD BOLLXBROKE. 

anecdote was preserved and related in regard to the 
interview between Lord Bolingbroke and Dr. 
Church, a prominent divine of the Church of En- 
gland, who, with Bishop Lavington and others, 
rejected and ridiculed the doctrines of grace. The 
anecdote was given to Mr. Madan by Lady Hun- 
tingdon herself, who received it from Lord Boling- 
broke. As it combines with other occurrences to 
form a vivid picture of the times, such as we would 
like to convey, it may not be a digression to repeat 
it. Lord Bolingbroke was employed one morning 
in his study reading Calvin's Institutes, when Dr. 
Church, a divine of the English Establishment, 
called on him. The deist asked the divine if he 
could guess what book it was that he had been 
studying ? " Keally, my lord, I can not," answered 
the doctor. " Well," said Lord Bolingbroke, " it 
is Calvin's Institutes. What do you think of such 
matters ?" " Oh, my lord, we don't think about 
such antiquated stuff ; we teach the plain doctrines 
of virtue and morality, and have long laid aside 
those abstruse points about grace." " Look you, 
doctor," said Lord Bolingbroke, " you know I don't 
believe the Bible to be a divine revelation ; but 
they who do can never defend it on any principles 
but the doctrine of grace. To say the truth, I have 
at times been almost persuaded to believe it upon 
this view of things ; and there is one argument 
which has gone very far with me in behalf of its 



DR. STONE HOUSE. 47 

authenticity, which is, that the belief in it exists 
upon earth even when committed to the care of 
such as you, who pretend to believe it, and yet 
deny the only principles on which it is defensible." 
Dr. Stonehouse was one of the crowd of deists 
who, along with Lord Bolingbroke, attacked Chris- 
tianity at this period, but was also one of the re- 
markable fruits of the mighty work of grace by 
which so many of the higher classes, as well as the 
lower, were snatched as brands from the burning. 
Dr. Doddridge was the happy and honored instru- 
ment in his conversion, and, like Mr. Madan, Dr. 
Stonehouse also renounced his profession and be- 
came a preacher of the Gospel. Dr. Cotton, the 
eminent physician and poet, who kept the lunatic 
asylum at St. Alban's, where Cowper's bark, 
"though tempest-tossed and half a wreck," was 
to find shelter, was a friend of Dr. Stonehouse, and 
by him was introduced to the notice of Lady Hunt- 
ingdon, about ten years before Cowper came under 
his care. On the publication of Cotton's volume 
of poems, " The Visions in Yerse," the author 
sent a copy to her ladyship, who, with her accus- 
tomed sweetness, delicacy, and faithfulness, on 
acknowledging the receipt of the volume, pointed 
out to the amiable author what she felt to be its 
deficiencies (considering its subjects) in conse- 
quence of the absence of religious truth. Dr. Cot- 
ton received her remarks most kindly, and Lady 



48 DR. COTTON. 

Huntingdon thus speaks in one of her letters in 
regard to the incident. " I am glad that my good 
friend was not offended at my late well-meant ad- 
monition and reproof. We must be faithful to 
each other, or else how can we expect to meet 
with joy at the great tribunal ? I trust he will 
yet be enabled to see by faith the Lord's Christ. 
Blessed be God, in Him all fullness dwells, of 
merit and righteousness, of grace and salvation, 
and this for the vilest of the vile, for whoever will. 
0, then, my friend, 

u If haply still thy mental shade 
Dark as the midnight gloom be made, 
On the sure faithful arm Divine 
Firm let thy fastening trust recline. 
The gentlest Sire, the best of Friends, 
To thee nor loss nor harm intends. 
Though toss'd on a tempestuous main, 
No wreck thy vessel shall sustain. 
Should there remain of rescuing grace 
No ghmpse, no footsteps left to trace, 
Hear the Lord's voice ; 'tis Jesus's will ; 
Believe, thou poor dark pilgrim, still. 

" Thus much I have written to my worthy friend 
at St. Alban's, and I trust God will bless my poor 
unworthy services to his eternal good. I long to 
see his fine genius consecrated to the best of causes, 
the glory of our incarnate God, and the salvation 
of souls redeemed by His most precious blood.'"' 

If these lines ever fell under the notice of Cow- 
per, during the darkness of his mental shade, 






GOSPEL MYSTERY. 49 

nothing could be more admirably adapted to his 
case than the instruction so conveyed. 

Lady Huntingdon at one time sent to Dr. Cot- 
ton the religious work of Marshall, entitled " The 
Gospel Mystery of Sanctification." Dr. Cotton 
entered into some little controversy with his friend 
Hervey, the author of the " Meditations," in re- 
gard to Marshall's sentiments, which he thought 
unscriptural and unreasonable. Mr. Hervey en- 
deavored to enlighten Cotton's mind as to the 
truths of the Gospel as set forth in the work by 
Marshall, but with what success we know not. 
Cowper understood and admired the volume, if 
Cotton did not ; and very likely it was in the lu- 
natic asylum, and under Dr. Cotton's care, that he 
met with • it ; so that Lady Huntingdon's gift 
reached the right recipient, a heart prepared for 
it, and one that needed it. Cowper says, in one 
of his letters, " Marshall is an old acquaintance of 
mine. I have both read him and heard him read 
with pleasure and edification ; the doctrines he 
maintains are, under the influence of the Spirit of 
Christ, the very life of my soul and the soul of all 
my happiness. I think Marshall one of the best 
writers, and the most spiritual expositor of the 
Scriptures I ever read." 

The characteristics of this era of the Holy Spir- 
it's power in England can not be better conveyed 
than by the relation of some of the extraordinary 

3 



50 CONVERSION OF THORPE. 

cases of conversion through the preaching of White- 
field, Komaine, Wesley, and others. One of the 
most singular was that of Mr. Thorpe, who after- 
ward became an effective minister of that Gospel 
which at first he ridiculed. He was one of White- 
field's most insulting opposers, and possessing an 
unusual talent for mimicry, he not only inter- 
rupted his sermons in public, but ridiculed them 
in private in convivial theatrical circles. On one 
occasion, at such a gathering for pleasure, revelry, 
and wit, he and three of his companions laid a 
wager for the most effective imitation and ridicule 
of WhitefielcVs preaching. Each was to open the 
Bible at random and preach an extempore ha- 
rangue from the first verse that presented itself, 
and the audience were to adjudge the prize after 
hearing all. Thorpe's three competitors each 
went through the game with impious buffoonery, 
and then it came his turn. They had the table 
for their rostrum, and as he stepped upon it, con- 
fident of his superior ability, Thorpe exclaimed, 
"I shall beat you all." They handed him the 
Bible, and when he opened it, the invisible provi- 
dence of God directed his eye at the first glance 
to the verse in the thirteenth chapter of Luke's 
Gospel, "Except ye repent ye shall all likewise 
perish." He read the words, but the moment he 
had uttered them he began to see and to feel their 
full import. The sword of the Spirit in that pass- 



CONVERSION OF THOETE. 51 

age went through his soul as a flash of lightning, 
revealing and consuming. An instantaneous con- 
viction of his own guilt as a sinner against God 
seized hold upon him, and conscience was aroused, 
as it sometimes is, suddenly and unexpectedly, 
and always will be when God sets our sins before 
us in the light of His countenance. The retribu- 
tion in that passage he felt was for himself, and 
its terrors glared upon him in array against his 
own soul, and out of that rapid and overwhelming 
conviction he preached. 

The truths of guilt, death, eternity, and the 
judgment to come, were never proclaimed in 
gloomier aspect, for there was no mixture of grace 
with them. Yet he frequently afterward declared 
that if ever in his life he preached by the assist- 
ance of the Spirit of God, it was at that time. 
The whole subject was revealed before him, the 
necessity of repentance, the threatened perdition 
of the soul, the terrors of the second death ; and he 
preached to his companions, guilty, reprobate, and 
dying, as himself reprobate and dying. His fer- 
vor and fire increased as he went on, and the sym- 
pathetic gloom of his audience deepened the con- 
victions on his own soul, and the sentences fell 
from his lips with such intense and burning im- 
agery, and such point, pungency, and power of 
language, that, as he afterward related, it seemed 
to him as if his own hair would stand erect with 



52 REV. MR. R O M A I N E . 

terror at their awfulness. It was as a blast from 
the lake Burning with fire and brimstone. Yet no 
man interrupted him, for all felt and saw, from the 
solemnity of his manner, what an overwhelming 
impression there was upon him, and though their 
astonishment deepened into angry and awful gloom 
beneath the lurid glare of his address, yet they sat 
spell-bound, listening and gazing at him, and 
when he descended from the table a profound si- 
lence reigned in the whole circle, and not one word 
concerning the wager was uttered. Thorpe in- 
stantly withdrew from the company without utter- 
ing a word, and, it is needless to say, never re- 
turned to that society ; but, after a season of the 
deepest distress and conflict, passed into the full 
light of the Gospel, and at length became a most 
successful preacher of its grace. 

Two other cases may be named, occurring under 
the ministry of two of Lady Huntingdon's chap- 
lains, at Oat Hall ; the first under the preaching 
of the celebrated Mr. Komaine, and the last under 
that of Mr. Venn, scarcely less remarkable as a 
devout experimental preacher. The two cases are 
from extremes in society, and therefore are with 
greater propriety presented as illustrations of the 
all-pervading power of this work of God's grace. 
And the time of these two striking instances was 
very near that of Cowper's own spiritual arrest 
and conversion, from 1762 to 1T64. The first was 



CAPTAIN SCOTT. 53 

of a military gentleman of an ancient family, Cap- 
tain Scott, who had been a soldier from his seven- 
teenth year, and was one of the officers exposed 
to imminent peril at the battle of Minden, in 1759. 
A sense of his clanger led him to the daily reading 
of the psalms and hymns in the Church lessons of 
each clay, but beyond this he advanced not a step 
to the knowledge of the grace of Christ as the way 
of salvation. At length, being quartered in the 
neighborhood of Oat Hall, a pious farmer invited 
him to go and hear a veiy famous man in the Hall 
preaching for Lady Huntingdon. It was Mr. Ro- 
maine, and thither he went to hear him the fol- 
lowing Sunday ; and Mr. Romaine's text was as if 
aimed and meant for the very condition of Scott's 
awakened but ignorant soul. It was the words of 
our blessed Lord in John, xiv. 6, " I am the Way." 
It was accompanied by the Spirit of God, and 
from that time Captain Scott was a changed man, 
and speedily began to preach to his own soldiers 
the truth which he had learned to love. He ex- 
horted his dragoons daily, and would not be deterred 
by any of the annoyances and opposition which he 
had to meet in the army. Fletcher described hini 
to Lady Huntingdon as preaching publicly in his 
regimentals to numerous congregations at Leicester 
in the Methodist Meeting-house. " This red-coat," 
said he, " will shame many a black one. I am 
sure he shames me." At length he sold his mili- 



54 OLD ABRAHAM. 

tary commission, and entered into the ministry. 
For twenty years he was one of the preachers at 
the Tabernacle in London. He renounced a bril- 
liant career of honor and advancement in this 
world for the privilege, which had become dearer 
to him than all things else, of preaching Christ 
crucified to dying sinners. 

The second of these instances was in humbler 
life, but more remarkable still for the great age of 
the man converted. It was an old man named 
Abraham, who for fifty years was a common sol- 
dier, and getting discharged from the service, set- 
tled with his wife near Oat Hall. When Lady 
Huntingdon's chapel was opened at Oat Hall, Abra- 
ham was just a hundred years old ; but though 
of that great age, still vigorous, active, and, on the 
subject of religion, inquisitive, and at the opening 
of the new chapel he made up his mind to hear 
the Methodists. That morning Mr. Venn preached, 
and that was the hour of Abraham's baptism by 
the Spirit. Never had he heard such truth, never 
with such perception of it, never so presented. 
" This/' said he, " is the very truth of God's Word, 
which I have been seeking, and never heard it so 
plain before. Here will I abide." From that time 
forward old Abraham was the child of God, grow- 
ing in grace and in the knowledge of the Saviour. 
He lived six years a most consistent and happy 
life as a Christian disciple ; and his great age and 



MISREPRESENTATIONS. 55 

heavenly conversation made him the object of 
veneration, wonder, and love. He always called 
the day when he heard the Gospel from Mr. Venn's 
lips the day of his birth, and spoke of himself, in 
allusion to Isaiah, Ixv. 20, as the child born a hun- 
dred years old. We know of only one similar 
instance on record, the case of the aged convert 
under the preaching of Flavel, who lived to adorn 
the profession of his faith to the age of one hun- 
dred and fifteen years. 

Extraordinary cases of conversion at this same 
period when Cowper's saving experience of the 
truth began, might be multiplied ; his own case 
was but one of a series, though in some respects 
the most remarkable. It was a time of spiritual 
life and power, and every class of society in En- 
gland felt it, notwithstanding the multitude in 
every circle who chose to take to themselves that 
dread malediction upon the enemies of such a 
work of grace, Behold ye despisers, and wonder, 
and perish ! It is surprising that Southey could 
have allowed himself to assume and perpetuate such 
prejudice and scorn ; that he could ascribe (even by 
insinuation) the piety of Lady Huntingdon to here- 
ditary insanity, and deplore the failure of all the ef- 
forts of established dignitaries in the Church to bring 
her to a saner sense of devotion ! that he could 
regard the piety of Bunyan as the fever of a burn- 
ing enthusiasm, and speak of Cowper's season of 



56 CHARACTER OF WHITEFIELD. 

personal and social religious enjoyment as having 
been preposterously called the happiest period of 
his life ! One is almost tempted to exclaim, be- 
holding such a man employed with such a spirit 
upon the wonders of providence and grace devel- 
oped in the lives of such men as Bunyan, White- 
field, Wesley, and Cowper, " What hast thou to 
do to declare God's statutes, or that thou shouldst 
take His covenant in thy mouth, seeing thou 
hatest instruction and castest His words behind 
thee ? Thou sittest and speakest against thy 
brother ; thou slanderest thine own mother's son." 
In contrast with the spirit of detraction and the 
license of literary scorn, how beautiful and noble 
was the character of Whitefield, as drawn by Cow- 
per in one of the earliest published of his poems, 
the "Essay on Hope." It was twenty years after his 
own conversion, and twelve years after Whitefiekrs 
death, when the poet penned this graphic and in- 
teresting portraiture. Had Cowper drawn the 
character of Wesley, it would have stood to al] 
ages in the same Christian light, the truthful, un- 
exaggerated testimonial of an admiring, grateful 
heart. 

Leuconomus — (beneath well-sounding Greek 
I slur a name a poet must not speak) — 
Stood pilloried on infamy's high stage, 
And bore the pelting storm of half an age ; 
The very butt of slander, and the blot 
For every dart that malice ever shot. 



WHITEFIELD. 57 

The man that mentioned him at once dismissed 
All mercy from his lips, and sneered and hissed. 
His crimes were such as Sodom never knew, 
And perjury stood up to swear all true ; 
His aim was mischief, and his zeal pretense ; 
His speech rebellious against common sense ; 
A knave, when tried on honesty's plain rule, 
And when by that of reason, a mere fool ; 
The world's best comfort was, his doom was past, 
Die when he might, he must be damned at last. 
Now, Truth, perform thine office ; waft aside 
The curtain drawn by prejudice and pride. 
Reveal (the man is dead) to wondering eyes 
This more than monster, in bis proper guise. 
He loved the world that hated him ; the tear 
That dropped upon his Bible was sincere. 
Assailed by scandal, and the tongue of strife, 
His only answer was a blameless life ; 
And he that forged, and he that threw the dart, 
Had each a brother's interest in his heart. 
Paul's love of Christ, and steadiness unbribed, 
Were copied close in him, and well transcribed. 
He followed Paul, his zeal a kindred flame, 
His apostolic charity the same. 
Like him crossed cheerfully tempestuous seas, 
Forsaking country, kindred, friends, and ease. 
Like him he labored, and like him content 
To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went. 
Blush, calumny, and write upon his tomb, 
H honest eulogy can spare the room, 
The deep repentance of thy thousand lies 
"Which, aimed at him, have pierced the offended skies, 
And say, Blot out my sin, confessed, deplored, 
Against Thine image in Thy saint, Lord ! 

Perhaps the Word of God was never preached 
in England with greater unction and power, cer- 
tainly never with more wonderful results, than by 
that circle of preachers, among whom Whitefield, 



58 LADY H U NTIXGDON. 

Wesley, Roruaine, Venn, Berridge, Toplady, New- 
ton, Scott and Cecil, held so conspicuous a posi- 
tion. The piety of Lady Huntingdon was a spring 
of impulse and of influence in this remarkable 
circle. Never was there a brighter manifestation 
of divine grace in the female character than in 
her's. Her family was one of the foremost in the 
crowd of the British aristocracy, at a period when 
that aristocracy was in its fullest bloom of power, 
wealth and grandeur. Cowper's withdrawal from 
that splendid social circle, of which at one time it 
was hoped he might have been an ornament, was 
a bitter mortification to his relatives and friends. 
They assigned his gloom and madness to religious 
enthusiasm as its cause, when religion was its only 
cure. It is not so singular that at that day they 
should have labored under so dark a delusion — a 
lunacy ten thousand-fold worse than Ms at any 
period of its disastrous power ; but that a biogra- 
pher and historian, himself professedly a member 
of the Christian Church, should have insinuated 
hereditary insanity as the cause of Lady Hunting- 
don's conversion, and Cowper's conversion as the 
cause of his insanity, and Newton's faithful and 
tender instruction, sympathy, and care in the 
duties of religion, as the occasion of general lunacy 
among his flock, and that too after more than fifty 
years' calm judgment of the age, in admiration of 
the providence and grace of God in the lives and 



OPPOSITION, 59 

religious experience of those personages, is sur- 
prising indeed. Cowper's pointed and severe de- 
scription of the spirit that characterized the multi- 
tude in Ms age is applicable to not a few in ours. 

Build by whatever plan caprice decrees, 
With what materials, on what ground you please ; 
Tour hope shall stand unblamed, perhaps admired, 
If not that hope the Scripture has required. 
The strange conceits, vain projects, and wild dreams 
With which hypocrisy for ever teems, 
(Though other follies strike the public eye 
And raise a laugh,) pass unmolested by. 
But if, unblamable in word and thought, 
A man arise, a man whom G-od has taught, 
With all Elijah's dignity of tone, 
And all the love of the beloved John, 
To storm the citadels they build in air, 
And smite th' untempered wall 'tis death to spare, 
To sweep away all refuges of lies 
And place, intead of quirks themselves devise, 
Lama Sabacthani before their eyes ; 
To prove that without Christ all gain is loss, 
All hope despair, that stands not on his cross ; 
Except the few his G-od may have impressed, 
A tenfold frenzy seizes all the rest. 

Throughout mankind, the Christian kind at least, 
There dwells a consciousness in every breast 
That folly ends where genuine hope begins, 
And he that finds his heaven must lose his sins. 
Nature opposes, with her utmost force, 
This riving stroke, this ultimate divorce ; 
And, while religion seems to be her view, 
Hates with a deep sincerity the true. 
For this, of all that ever influenced man 
Since Abel worshiped, or the world began, 
This only spares no lust, admits no plea, 
But makes him. if at all, completely free ; 



60 OPPOSITION. 

Sounds forth the signal, as she mounts her car, 

Of an eternal, universal war ; 

Rejects all treaty, penetrates all wiles, 

Scorns with the. same indifference frowns and smiles ; 

Drives through the realms of sin, where riot reels, 

And grinds his crown beneath her burning wheels I 

Hence all that is in man, pride, passion, art, 

Powers of the mind, and feelings of the heart, 

Insensible of truth's almighty charms, 

Starts at her first approach, and sounds to arms ! 

"While bigotry, with well-dissembled fears, 

His eyes shut fast, his fingers in his ears, 

Mighty to parry and push by God's Word, 

With senseless noise, his argument the sword, 

Pretends a zeal for godliness and grace ; 

And spits abhorrence in the Christian's face. 



CHAPTER IV. 



LITERATURE AND GENIUS OF THE PERIOD.— PREVALENCE OP 
SKEPTICISM. 



The same year, 1762, may be taken as a year 
of survey, in regard to the aspect and influences 
of times, circumstances, society, and literature, as 
well as religion. It was about twenty years after 
the death of Pope, forty-one from the death of 
Prior, forty-three from that of Addison, thirty- 
three from that of Steele, seventeen from that of 
Swift, thirty from that of Gray, thirty-six from that 
of Vanbrugh, and thirty-nine from that of Con- 
greve. Arbuthnot died in 1735, Lord Bolingbroke 
in 1751. Some of these writers had stamped the 
manners and opinions of the age by their genius, 
and formed a taste and style then fully prevalent. 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, so distinguished 
for the ease, wit, and beauty of her letters, died in 
1762. Lord Shaftesbury had died in 1713, and 
the collection of his works had been published in 
1716 ; and the powerful influence which the min- 
gled fascination of his style and deistical opinions 



62 LITERATURE AND GENIUS 

exerted in various directions may be learned in the 
autobiographies of two men as contra-distinguished 
as Dr. Franklin and John Newton, both having 
been brought, at an early period, under a tempo- 
rary despotism beneath that nobleman's writings. 

Atterbury died in 1731, Defoe in the same year. 
Bishop Berkely died in 1753; Bishop Lowth, 1787; 
Dr. Samuel Clarke, 1729 ; Bishop Butler, 1752 ; 
Handel, 1759; Garrick, 1779. Hannah More was 
born 1745, and commenced her literary career when 
Cowper was writing the Olney Hymns. Among 
the most celebrated divines of the period were 
Bishop Newton, Farmer, Lardner, Lowman, Lowth, 
Leland, Chandler, Warburton, Jortin, Hoadly, 
Wesley, Whitefield, John Newton, Soame Jenyns, 
Scott, Kennicott, and Cecil. 

The period we are contemplating was fourteen 
years after the death of Thomson, and thirty years 
since the publication of the Poem of the Seasons. 
It was fourteen years after the death of Watts. 
It was just after the publication of Young's "Night 
Thoughts." " Blair's Grave" had been published in 
1743, the "Night Thoughts" in 1760. Yet Southey 
has spoken of " The Grave" as a poem written in 
imitation of the "Night Thoughts" ; a criticism 
which indicates the carelessness and haste with 
which some other portion of his "Life of Cowper" 
may have been composed. Dr. Johnson had pub- 
lished his Dictionary in 17o4, and his Easselassoon 



OF THE PERIOD. 63 

after. It was three or four years after the publi- 
cation of Gray's Odes. It was just after the pub- 
lication of Goldsmith's " Citizen of the World/' and 
just before the appearance of his poem of "The 
Traveler." It was the year before the death of 
Shenstone. It was eight years after the death of 
Collins, the poet so nearly at one time resembling 
Cowper in the dread eclipse of reason under which 
he died, and in his inimitably exquisite poetry, 
coming nearer, in every line, to the perfection of 
Cowper in his most harmonious pieces, than any 
other poet in the English language. Chatterton, 
the marvelous boy that perished in his pride, 
was at this time ten years old, and began his sad, 
strange, poetical career only one year afterward. 
Churchill was in the brief bonfire of reputation, 
and had just published his " Bosciad." The admira- 
tion of his poems was like the gaze of a crowd at 
a display of fire-works from the top of the London 
Monument. Falconer had just published his 
" Shipwreck," and it was the year of the publica- 
tion of MTherson's " Fingal." 

Edmund Burke had published his " Essay on 
the Sublime and Beautiful," but had not yet en- 
tered Parliament, nor began that development of 
his wonderful genius which afterward attracted the 
gaze of all Europe. Garrick and Foote were in 
the midst of their fame, and Sir Joshua Eeynolds 
of his. The Johnsonian Club and circle were in 



64 LITERATURE AND GENIUS 

the first zest of their social and literary enjoyment. 
It was the year after the death of Kichardson, the 
novelist. Smollet, Fielding, Mackenzie, Horace 
Walpole, Mr. Beekforcl, Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Kad- 
cliife, Miss Burney, and some others, had opened, 
or were striking out, various new paths in that wil- 
derness of fiction in which the main body of readers 
in our world have since been wandering, delighted 
and absorbed ; paths that some of them, if pursued, 
lead to inevitable ruin. It was three years after 
the publication of Kobertson's " History of Scot- 
land," and the year of the publication of the two 
last volumes- of Hume's "History of England/' 
Adam Smith's " Theory of Moral Sentiments" had 
been published in 1759. Sir William Blackstone 
was in the midst of his eminent reputation and 
service in the law ; his " Commentaries" were pub- 
lished in 1765. Keid's " Inquiry into the Human 
Understanding" was published in 1764 ; Lord 
Karnes's " Elements of Criticism" in 1762. The 
first edition of Percy's " Keliques of Ancient En- 
glish Poetry" was published, 1765. The first vol- 
ume of Warburton's " Divine Legation" was pub- 
lished in 1738, the last not till 1788, after the 
author's death. Matthew Tindal's " Christianity 
as Old as the Creation" was published not long- 
before the " Divine Legation ;" and that deistical 
controversy arose out of it in which Dr. Waterland 
and Dr. Conyers Middleton took an important 



OF THE PERIOD. 65 

part. Middleton's "Life of Cicero" was first 
published about 1740, and Leland's "Deistical 
Writers" near the same period. Neal's " History 
of the Puritans" was published, the two first 
volumes in 1733. The fourth edition of War- 
burton's work was dedicated, in 1765, to Lord 
Mansfield, then and for many years the Lord 
Chief Justice of England. 

Until the publication of the poem of the " Night 
Thoughts," there had been, for near three quarters 
of a century, little intrusion of religion into what 
was called Polite Literature ; but the world had 
seen the influence of a witty, licentious, and infidel 
literature passing into what was called religion. 
They had seen simplicity and nature retire before 
the tinsel and the blaze of art enshrined by ge- 
nius, and worshiped with idolatrous devotion. 
Formalism had taken the place of true, piety ; 
fervor was ridiculed as fanaticism, faith despised 
as superstition, and superstition exalted into the 
place of faith. Deism and Socinianism had pre- 
vailed under the robes of the priesthood of the 
Church of England, and were encountered, if at 
all, with cold, elaborate, artificial learning, in the 
shape of cumbrous Essays, of which the collection 
of Tracts by Watson in five octavo volumes is a 
favorable specimen. When Whitefleld and Wes- 
ley began their impetuous and shining career, re- 
ligion was at a low ebb indeed in the Church and 



GG PREVALENCE OF SKEPTICISM. 

among the people of England. Bishop Butler 
presented his " Analogy" to the queen in 1736, 
and in the prefatory advertisement to that profound 
and powerful work he was constrained to write as 
follows : " It is come, I know not how, to be taken 
for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is 
not so much as a subject of inquiry ; but that it is 
now at length discovered to be fictitious. And ac- 
cordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, 
this were an agreed point among all people of dis- 
cernment, and nothing remained but to set it up 
as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it 
were by way of reprisals for its having so long in- 
terrupted the pleasures of the world." 

And at the close of that great work he said, " If 
men can go on to vilify or disregard Christianity, 
which is to talk and act as if they had a demon- 
stration of its falsehood, there is no reason to think 
they would alter their behavior to any purpose, 
though there were a (demonstration of its truth." 
There was a practical demonstration, in the out- 
pouring of the Divine Spirit attending the preach- 
ing of Whitefield and Wesley, such as had not 
been witnessed since the days of Pentecost ; but 
the demonstration itself was maligned and blas- 
phemed by many, as the casting out of devils by 
Beelzebub. 

Cowper says himself, in one of his letters to a 
dear religious friend in 1767, " My religious prin- 



PREVALENCE OF SKEPTICISM. 67 

ciples are generally excepted against, and the con- 
duct they produce, wherever they are heartily 
maintained, is still more the object of disapproba- 
tion than the principles themselves." In a previ- 
ous letter to Lady Hesketh, he had said, " Solitude 
has nothing gloomy in it, if the soul points upward. 
St. Paul tells his Hebrew converts, ' Ye are come 
(already come) to Mount Sion, to an innumerable 
company of angels, to the general assembly of the 
first-born, which are written in heaven, and to 
Jesus the mediator of the new covenant/ When 
this is the case, as surely it was with them, or the 
Spirit of Truth had never spoken it, there is an 
end of the melancholy and dullness of life at once. 
... A lively faith is able to anticipate in some 
measure the joys of that heavenly society which 
the soul shall actually possess hereafter. . . . My 
dear cousin, one half of the Christian world would 
call this madness, fanaticism and folly. . . . Let 
us see that we do not deceive ourselves in a matter 
of such infinite moment." 

If one half the Christian world had got so turned 
away from life into the frost and death of formal- 
ism, with little or nothing of life left but just 
enough for the demonstration of bitterness and 
opposition against what, were called the doctrines 
of grace, and in ridicule of the style of fervent 
piety called Methodism, how deplorable an influ- 
ence must have reigned in the world of popular 



68 



PREVALENCE OF SKEPTICISM, 



and fashionable literature ! No wonder that a 
sarcastic and haughty deism, and the frigidity 
and carelessness of natural religion maintained so 
great and wide a supremacy. The idea of conver- 
sion by the grace of God was scoffed at, was re- 
garded as enthusiasm or fanaticism, assuming, 
indeed, a mild and melancholy type in an amiable 
man such as Cowper, but still a self-righteous, 
presumptuous, conceited form of spiritual bigotry 
and pride. In such a period, great was the need 
of instruments to be raised up and prepared like 
Cowper, Hannah More and Wilberforce, to carry 
the powerful voice of truth into the drawing-rooms 
of the great, the gay, and the fashionable, and to 
set Christianity itself, in its simplest Grospel dress, 
amid the attractions of science, genius, and lite- 
rary taste. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ARREST OF COWPER. — PROVIDENCES AND DISCIPLINE OF TRIAL 
BY WHICH HE WAS AWAKENED. — HIS ATTEMPT AT SUICIDE. — HIS 
CONVICTION OF SIN. — HIS ANGUISH AND DESPAIR. 

The great event of Cowper's conversion made a 
change in his whole life and social circle, such as 
no temporary insanity, had he recovered from it in 
any other way than that of a religious faith by Di- 
vine grace, could have effected. It broke up all 
his habits, and removed him forever from the gay 
and dissipated companions, in whose society so 
many years of the best part of his life had already 
been spent. " The storm of sixty- three/' as Cow- 
per designated the period of his terrific gloom and 
madness at St. Alban's, made a wreck of the 
friendships of many years, and he said that he had 
great reason to be thankful that he had lost none 
of his acquaintances but those whom he had deter- 
mined not to keep. He refers, in his letters, to 
some of them who had been suddenly arrested by 
death, while he himself was passing through the 
valley of the shadow of death in the lunatic asy- 



70 THE ARREST. 

lum. " Two of my friends have been cut off dur- 
ing my illness, in the midst of such a life as it is 
frightful to reflect upon ; and here am I in better 
health and spirits than I can almost remember to 
have enjoyed before, after having spent months in 
the apprehension of instant death. How mysteri- 
ous are the ways of Providence ! Why did I re- 
ceive grace and mercy ? Why was I preserved, 
afflicted for my good, received, as I trust, into fa- 
vor, and blessed with the greatest happiness I can 
ever know or hope for in this life, while they were 
overtaken by the great arrest, unawakened, unre- 
p en ting, and every way unprepared for it ? His 
infinite wisdom, to whose infinite mercy I owe it 
all, can solve these questions, and none beside 
Him/' One of these friends cut off so unexpect- 
edly, was poor Kobert Lloyd the poet, son of Kev. 
Dr. Lloyd, one of the teachers at Westminster 
School. They had been among Cowper's intimate 
associates in the Nonsense Club, with Bonnel 
Thornton, George Colman, and others of a like 
convivial character. No wonder at the feelings of 
gratitude and amazement with which he looked 
back at his own danger, and at the supernatural 
suddenness and violence of his escape. 

In 1762 the revolutionary chain of events in 
Cowpcr's existence began, and his character and 
life were together arrested and turned back from 
an earthly into a heavenly career. He had glided 






FALSE PEACE. 71 

on through life thus far, till he was thirty-one 
years of age, a fine classical scholar, a man of ex- 
quisite refined taste, an amiable, playful, affection- 
ate temper, a deep humorous vein, and a disposi- 
tion for social amusement, as well as a tendency 
to mental depression, that led him to seek the en- 
joyment of society for relief. He had neither re- 
ligious habit nor principle, but had come to an 
acquiescence, with which he says he had settled 
down, in the following conclusion as to the future 
life, namely, " that the only course he could take 
to secure his present peace was to wink hard against 
the prospect of future misery, and to resolve to 
banish all thoughts upon a subject on which he 
thought to so little purpose." 

To 10 ink hard against the prospect of future 
misery ! How graphic a picture of the struggle 
in a careless, prayerless, pleasure-loving heart, 
against partial conviction and anxiety in regard to 
the retributions of a future state. This winking 
hard against the prospects of future misery is, we 
apprehend, the only religious effort of many a 
mind, and the only step of many a disturbed and 
frightened conscience toward peace. Some persons 
wink so hard, that the effect is like that produced 
by a blow upon the temples, or a strong, sudden 
pressure over the eye-balls, making the eyes flash 
fire. Strange radiances appear in these eye-flashes, 
which some are willing to accept as revelations, 






72 SPIRITUAL SLEEP-WALKERS. 

when they have rejected the Word of God, or so 
utterly neglected it, as to be quite ignorant of its 
actual details in reference to the future world. 

If the soul were suddenly illuminated, in the 
midst of its carelessness and unbelief, to see and 
feel things as they are, terror would take posses- 
sion of the conscience and the heart, and all insen- 
sibility would pass away forever. But we are 
often as men in a trance, or as persons walking in 
their sleep, and conscious of nothing. Sleep- 
walkers are never terrified, even by dangers that 
would take from a waking man all his self-posses- 
sion. Sleep-walkers have been known to balance 
themselves upon the topmost ridge of the most 
perilous heights, with as much indifference and 
security as if they were walking upon even ground. 
They have been seen treading at the eaves of lofty 
buildings, and bending over, and looking down 
into the street, making the gazers, who have dis- 
covered the experiment, tremble with fright, and 
grow faint with expectation ; and if the trance 
should suddenly pass away, and the waking sense 
be restored, the self-discovery would prove fatal, 
and the man would lose his balance and fall, 
where before he trod with perfect indifference and 
security. Just so to the quickened sight and con- 
science of spiritual spectators, careless sinners are 
beheld walking asleep and indifferent on the verge 
of the world of woe. They bend over toward the 



v 



THE AWAKENING. 73 

flaming gulf, and if they saw and felt what it is 
they are doing, what dreadful hazard they are 
running, there would, for the time, be no more life 
in them. The consciousness of meeting a holy 
God, and the thought of what was before them, 
would fill their minds with anguish, which nothing 
but the blood of Christ, nothing but a heartfelt, 
humble application of the soul for God's mercy, 
through Christ, nothing but the faith and hope of 
forgiveness, could possibly allay. 

Through this process of awakening, and terror, 
Cowper was to pass to life and peace eternal, 
though reason itself was to be dethroned, for a 
short period, in the dreadful conflict. But God's 
time of interposing mercy had come. Cowper had 
now nearly spent what little patrimony had fallen 
to him, and began to be in want ; under fear of 
want, he began to desire an appointment. Here 
occurs a passage in his autobiography which the 
writers of his life long concealed studiously from 
notice, and continued to ignore its existence, even 
when it had been printed, and even garbled it in 
printing it themselves. Hayley ran over the pass- 
age by saying that Cowper, in this emergency, 
had prospects of emolument by the interest of his 
family, and was nominated to the offices of Read- 
ing Clerk, and Clerk of the Private Committees 
in the House of Lords. Now let Cowper, as a 
grateful child of God, showing us from what 
4 



74 BELT- J U D G 31 E X T . 

depths of guilt and misery he had been rescued, 
open the door of his own heart, or a window in 
it, and tell us what was going on, with his own 
mature and devout judgment upon the transac- 
tions ; a judgment severer, certainly, than a man 
of the world would ever pass upon mere motives, 
hut nevertheless the self-judgment of a mind and 
heart, looking back from a state of calm and 
heavenly peace with God, over a life that had 
been passed without him. 

Under some imagination or apprehension of ap- 
proaching want, Cowper says, " I one day said to 
a friend of mine, if the Clerk of the Journals of 
the House of Lords should die, I had some hopes 
that my kinsman, who had the place in his dis- 
posal, would think of and appoint me to succeed 
him. We both agreed that the business of the 
place, being transacted in private, would exactly 
suit me ; and both expressed an earnest ivish for 
his death, that I might be provided for. Thus 
did I covet what God had commanded me not to 
covet, and involved myself in still deeper guilt, by 
doing it in the spirit of a murderer." 

It was remarkable that very speedily this Clerk 
of the Journals of the House died, and two other 
offices by the same event fell vacant, being in the 
gift of Major Cowper, the poet's friend and kins- 
man. These two offices of Reading Clerk, and 
Clerk of the Committee, being the most profitable 






FEARS AND PERPLEXITIES. 75 

places, were at once offered to Cowper, and he 
immediately, without a moment's reflection, ac- 
cepted them ; but at the same time, as it pleased 
God, "received a dagger in his heart," and began 
to be deeply perplexed by the impossibility of 
executing a business of so public a nature. After 
a week spent in misery, he besought his friend to 
give him the simple Clerkship of the Journals, 
instead of the higher situation, and, when this 
exchange was accomplished, he began to be some- 
what at ease. 

But a new difficulty arose, for Major Cowper's 
right to nominate his kinsman being disputed, and 
a powerful party formed in favor of another can- 
didate, every inch of ground had to be contested ; 
there must be an examination at the Bar of the 
House, and Cowper had to visit the Journal Office 
daily, in order to qualify himself for the strictest 
scrutiny. This brought back the whole horror of 
his fears and perplexities. He knew to a demon- 
stration that upon these terms the Clerkship of 
the Journals was no place for him. Nevertheless, 
his friend's honor and interest, and his own repu- 
tation and circumstances, made it seem absolutely 
necessary that he should persevere, and did indeed 
urge him forward, though only as a fettered 
criminal is dragged to execution. " They whose 
spirits are formed like mine," says he in his own 
journal of these occurrences, " to whom a public 



76 FEVER OF THE NERVES. 

exhibition of themselves on any occasion is mortal 
poison, may have some idea of the horror of my 
situation ; others can have none. My continual 
misery at length brought on a nervous fever ; 
quiet forsook me by day, and peace by night. A 
ringer raised against me was more than I could 
stand against." 

In this distressing condition he went daily to 
the Journal Office, and read, in preparation for his 
examination, like a man beneath the nightmare. 
All the inferior clerks were under the influence of 
the opposing candidate, so that from them he 
could gain no assistance, nor in this condition of 
mind would it have availed him in the least, for 
he turned over the leaves as an automaton, with 
a perfect bewilderment and vacuity, as one under 
the power of a spell ; and this habit he continued, 
studying without perception, understanding, or 
instruction, and, in fact, in absolute, uninterrupted 
despair, every day for more than half a year. 

Now here was enough to make almost any man 
insane, and it is wonderful that Cowper's mind did 
not sooner give way under this process. It is sur- 
prising that he could persevere so long in this mode 
of life, and keep up the appearance of hope and 
cheerfulness. And yet there is a most playful let- 
ter on record, written to Lady Hesketh, in the very 
midst of all this torture. An absence at Margate, 
with the intermission of his painful employments, 



SELF-TORTURE. 77 

and a season of social enjoyment in a new scene, 
helped him to recover his spirits ; but still the ter- 
rible crisis was before him, and in October he had 
to return to the office and renew his ineffectual la- 
bor, pressed by necessity on either side, with noth- 
ing but despair in prospect. 

For this was the dilemma to which now his sen- 
sitive mind was reduced, either to keep possession 
of the office, and contest it to the last extremity, 
and by so doing expose himself to a public rejection 
for incompetency, or else to renounce it at once, 
and thus run the hazard of ruining his benefactor's 
right of appointment. The anguish of his perplex- 
ity was such that sometimes in a fit of passion 
when alone, he would cry out aloud, and curse the 
hour of his birth, lifting up his eyes to heaven and 
exclaiming, " What sin have I committed to de- 
serve this ?" He could not pray, and would not 
attempt it, being firmly persuaded that God would 
not deliver him. But he consulted Dr. Heberden, 
his physician, and dosed himself with drugs ; and 
having found a prayer or two in what he called 
" that repository of self-righteousness and pharisa- 
ical lumber, < The Whole Duty of Man/ " he re- 
peated them a few nights, and then threw away 
the book and all thoughts of God and of a remedy 
with it. His wretchedness was past hope and 
effort. 

And now it could not be otherwise, these things 



78 ATTEMPTS AT 

continuing, than that the coil of his misery, inde- 
cision, and despair, should rapidly run his mind, 
down to madness. He had, indeed, a strong fore- 
boding of it, and began to look upon madness as 
his only chance remaining. So earnestly did he 
desire it, that his grand fear now was that the 
failure of his senses would not come in time to ex- 
cuse his appearance at the bar, and prevent the 
trial for the clerkship. But he was still in his 
senses as the day drew near ; and amid the flashes 
in the stormy horizon of his soul in that terrible 
tempest, the dark and dreadful purpose of self- 
murder began to disclose itself, at first dim, murky, 
and vanishing, then fixed and intimate, and enter- 
tained without shuddering. He began to reason 
that perhaps there might be no God, or the Scrip- 
tures might be false, and suicide nowhere forbid- 
den, or that at the worst his misery in hell itself 
would be more supportable. Probably the state 
of mind of a self-murderer never before was dis- 
closed with such dreadful truth and reality, if 
disclosed at all. 

At first he resorted to laudanum, and one day 
in November 1763, purchased a bottle of the poi- 
son, which he kept by him for a week, but was 
providentially by one interposition after another, 
preserved from accomplishing his purpose. At 
length the very morning before the day appointed 
for his public appearance at the bar of the house, 



SELF-DESTRUCTION. 79 

he took up a newspaper in Richards's Coffee House, 
where he was at breakfast, and read in it. a letter 
which, in his disordered, state of mind, seemed to 
him a libel intended for himself, and written by 
one acquainted with his circumstances, on purpose 
to hurry him on to the suicide he was contemplat- 
ing. In reality this delusion, itself sufficient proof 
that already he was insane, had that effect ; and 
after several ineffectual attempts, he arose the 
next morning, hearing the clock strike seven, and 
knowing that no more time was to be lost, bolted 
the inner door of his chamber, as he thought, and 
proceeded deliberately to the work of hanging him- 
self by means of a garter made of a broad piece of 
scarlet binding with sliding buckles. He strained 
the noose tightly around his neck, and fastened it 
to the top of the bed-frame, but the iron bent and 
let him down. A second, time he fastened it, but 
the frame broke short, and he fell again. A third 
time he fastened it on an angle of the door, and 
pushing away the chair with his feet, hung at his 
whole length, till he lost all consciousness of exist- 
ence, and knew nothing, till a feeling like that pro- 
duced by a flash of lightning passed over his whole 
body, and he found himself fallen on his face upon 
the floor. The blood had stagnated under his eye, 
but by the mercy of God the cord broke before the 
strangulation was completed, -and Cowper wai 
saved. 



80 CONVICTIONS OF GUILT. 

And now ensued the most overwhelming convic- 
tion of guilt, though up to this time he had felt 
no anxiety of a spiritual kind ; the attempt at 
self-murder harrowed up his conscience, and a 
sense of God's wrath, and a deep despair of escap- 
ing it, instantly succeeded. The terrors of the 
Lord and his own iniquities set themselves in array 
against him. Every approach to the Scriptures was 
but an increase of his anguish, and as in the case 
of Bunyan, the sword of the Spirit seemed to guard 
the tree of life from his touch, and flamed against 
him in every avenue of access. He was scared 
with visions and terrified with dreams, and by day 
and by night experienced a continual agony of soul. 
In every book that he took up he found something 
that struck him to the heart, and if he went into 
the street, he thought the people stared and 
laughed at him, and it seemed as if the voice of 
his own conscience was so loud that others must 
hear it. He bought a ballad of a person who was 
singing it in the street, because he thought it was 
written on himself. He now began to imagine 
that he had committed the unpardonable sin, and 
in this conviction gave himself up anew to despair. 
He says that he felt a sense of burning in his heart 
like that of real fire, and concluded it was an earn- 
est of those eternal flames which would soon re- 
ceive him. In this condition he remembered the 
kindness and piety of his friend the Rev. Martin 






I N T E 11 V I E W W .TU MB. MADAK, 81 

Madan, and sent for him ; for though he used to 
think him an enthusiast, yet in this extremity of 
spiritual distress he felt that if any one could lead 
and comfort him, it must be he. The good man 
brought him to the all-atoning blood of Christ, 
and presented the way of salvation in a manner so 
simple, scriptural and affecting, that Cowper wept 
freely with a sense of his ingratitude, and deplored 
his want of faith. 

Cowper's brother from Cambridge was with him 
during that interview with Mr. Madan. Most af- 
fectionately had Cowper's brother tried to comfort 
him, but in vain, though pierced to the heart at the 
sight of such anguish and despair as he found him 
in. Mr. Madan and Cowper sat on the bed-side 
together, and he affectionately presented the Gos- 
pel to the gloomy sufferer, beginning with the lost 
condition of the sinner against God, as presented 
in his Word. In this Cowper says he began to feel 
something like hope dawning in his heart, for since 
the condition of all mankind was the same, it 
seemed to make his own state appear less desperate. 
Then, when presenting the all-atoning efficacy of 
the blood of Christ and his righteousness for our 
justification, from the same precious Scriptures, 
Cowper's heart began to burn within him, and his 
tears flowed freely. It was only when Mr. Madan 
came to the necessity, on Cowper's own part, of a 
personal faith in the Lord Jesus, such as woulc| 
4* 



82 



ABSOLUTE INSANITY 



embrace Christ as Paul had done, and say, ' Who 
loved me, and gave Himself for me/ that Cowper 
found his heart failing, and deplored his want of 
such a faith, and could only sigh forth the prayer 
that God, whose gift it was, might bestow it upon 
him. 

It was under the impression from this interview, 
and in the exercise of this sincere desire for faith, 
that Cowper seems to have passed from such an in- 
terval of light into thick darkness, darkness that 
might be felt. He slept, he says, three hours, but 
awoke in greater terror and agony than ever. The 
pains of hell got hold upon him, and the sorrows 
of death encompassed him. The malady manifested 
its physical power, and showed that it was winding 
up his nervous system rapidly to delirium. His 
hands and feet became cold and stiff ; he was in 
a cold-sweat ; life seemed retreating ; and he 
thought he was about to die. Notwithstanding the 
relief his wounded spirit had seemed to receive 
from its anguish, this paroxysm of nervous 
depression (extreme depression and extreme ex- 
citement apparently combined) increased upon 
him, till, after some hours of horrible and un- 
speakable anguish and dismay, a strange and 
dreadful darkness fell suddenly upon him. The 
sensation, as Cowper described it in his own Me- 
moir, was as if a heavy blow had suddenly fallen 
on the brain, without touching the skull ; so in- 



DEVELOPED. 83 

tensely painful, that Cowper clapped his hand to 
his forehead, and cried aloud. At every blow his 
thoughts and expressions became more wild and 
incoherent, till manifestly it was absolute and un- 
mistakable insanity. From that moment, through 
the whole interval of madness, all that remained 
clear to him, he says, was the sense of sin, and the 
expectation of punishment. His mind was a pro- 
found chaos, brooded over by despair. 

His brother instantly perceived this' decisive 
change when it commenced, and, on consultation 
with his friends, it was determined that he should 
be carried, not to any retreat in London (for which 
resolution Cowper afterward praised God, deeming 
it a particular providence of His mercy), but to St. 
Albans, and placed under the care of that humane, 
experienced, and excellent physician, and man of 
letters and of piety, Dr. Cotton, with whom Cow- 
per already had some acquaintance. 

A few days before Cowper left London, his 
cousin Lady Hesketh, and Sir Thomas, visited him 
at his chambers in the Temple. It was just before 
the fearful paroxysm which has been described, 
and of which the signs were being developed in his 
deepening gloom. He neither looked at Lady 
Hesketh nor spoke to her during that interview, 
and he said in his heart, when she went out of the 
door, " Farewell ! There will be no more inter- 



84 ANGUISH OF 

course between us, forever !" In the first letter 
which he wrote to Lady Hesketh after the restora- 
tion of his reason, he referred to his unaccountable 
behavior in that interview. " I remember I neither 
spoke to you nor looked at you. The solution of 
the mystery indeed followed soon after ; but at the 
time it must have been inexplicable. The uproar 
within was even then begun, and my silence was 
only the sulldness of a thunder-storm before it 
opens. I am glad, however, that the only instance 
in which I knew not how to value your company, 
was when I was not in my senses." 

Cowper's brother, on Ins dying bed, described 
his feelings at the time of the interview with Cow- 
per in the period of his mental distress in London. 
He would have given the universe, when he found 
him in such anguish and despair, to have admin- 
istered some comfort to him, and tried every method 
of doing it, but found it impossible. He began to 
consider his sufferings as a judgment upon his 
brother, and his own inability to relieve them as a 
judgment upon himself. But when Mr. Madan 
came in and spoke the precious consolations of the 
Gospel to Cowper's agitated soul, he succeeded in 
a moment in calming him. This surprised Cow- 
per's brother, for Mr. Madan had, in the name of 
Christ, and the message of his mercy to the chief 
of sinners, a key to Cowper's heart, which his 



cowpeb's brother, 85 

brother had then neither gained nor knew how to 
use ; but it no longer surprised him when the light 
had broken upon his mind, and the peace of God 
that passeth ail understanding had rilled his heart 
during his own sickness. 



CHAPTER VI. 

COWPER'S CONVERSION. — THE GRACE AND GLORY OP IT. 

During the period of Cowper's seclusion at St. 
Albans, the tenderest and most skillful discipline, 
both for mind and body, was brought to bear upon 
nim, but for many months to no apparent purpose. 
It was not that reason was dethroned, as in the 
first access of his insanity, but an immovable, im- 
penetrable, awful gloom surrounded him, out of 
which it seemed as if he never would emerge. All 
this while, Cowper says, conviction of sin and ex- 
pectation of instant judgment never left him, from 
the 7th of December, 1763, till the middle of July 
following ; and for eight months all that passed 
might be classed under, two heads, conviction of 
sin and despair of mercy. Over the secrets of the 
prison-house he draws the vail, if indeed he remem- 
bered them ; but even when he had so far regained 
his reason as to enter into conversation with Dr. 
Cotton, putting on the aspect of smiles and mer- 
riment, he still carried the sentence of irrecoverable 
doom in his heart. The gloom continued, till a 



LIGHT AND GRACE. 87 

visit from his brother in July, 1764, seemed at- 
tended with a faint breaking of the cloud ; and 
something like a ray of hope, in the midst of their 
conversation, shot into his heart. 

And now, for the first time in a long while, he 
took up the Bible, which he found upon a bench 
in the garden where he was walking, but which he 
had long thrown aside, as having no more any 
interest or portion in it. The eleventh chapter of 
John, to which he opened, deeply affected him ; 
and though as yet the way of salvation was not 
beheld by him, still the cloud of horror seemed 
every moment passing away, and every moment 
came fraught with hope. It seemed at length like 
a spring-time in his soul, when the voice of the 
singing of birds might once more be heard, and a 
resurrection from death be experienced. And, 
indeed, God's time of mercy in Christ Jesus had 
now come. Seating himself in a chair near the 
window, and seeing a Bible there, Cowper once 
more took it up and opened it for comfort and in- 
struction. And now the very first verse he fell 
upon was that most remarkable passage in the 
third chapter of Eomans, that blessed third of 
Paul, as Bunyan would have called it, " whom God 
had set forth to be a propitiation through faith 
in His blood, to declare His righteousness through 
the remission of sins that are passed, through the 
forbearance of God." Immediately on reading 



88 LIGHT AND GRACE. 

this verse, the scales fell from his eyes, as in 
another case from Paul's, and in his own language, 
"he received strength to believe, and the full 
beams of the Sun of Kighteousness shone upon 
him." " I saw," says he, " the sufficiency of the 
atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His 
blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His 
justification. In a moment I believed, and re- 
ceived the Gospel. Whatever my friend Madan 
had said to me so long before, revived with all its 
clearness, with demonstration of the Spirit, and 
with power." 

Now this was a most complete and wondrous 
cure. Not more wondrous was that of the poor 
wild man of the mountains in Judea, of old pos- 
sessed with devils, when brought to sit, clothed and 
in his right mind, at the feet of his Kedeemer. The 
fever of the brain was quenched, those specters 
with dragon wings that had brooded over the 
chaos of his soul, were fled forever ; the ignorance 
and darkness of an understanding blinded by the 
god of this world had been driven away before 
the mild, calm, holy light of a regenerated, illum- 
inated, sanctified reason, in her white robe of 
humility and faith ; and the anxious, restless, 
gloomy unbelief and despair of heart had given 
place to a sweet and rapturous confidence in 
Jesus. Oh, it were worth going mad many years, 
to be the subject of such a heavenly deliverance 






LIGHT AND GRACE. 8U 

The Hand Divine of the Great Physician, gentle 
and invisible, was in all this ; the vail was taken 
from Cowper's heart, and the Lord of Life and 
Glory stood revealed before him ; and when his 
soul took in the meaning of that grand passage in 
God's Word, it was a flood of heaven's light over 
his whole being. It was as sudden and complete 
an illumination as when the light shineth from 
one side of heaven to the other ; and it was as 
permanent, through a long and blissful season of 
unclouded Christian experience, as when the sun 
shineth at noon-day, or in that other and more 
lovely image in the Word of God, as the sun's 
clear shining after rain. It was creative energy 
and beauty in the spiritual world, transcending the 
glory of the scene when God said, " Let there he 
light" in the material world. 

But what was this sudden revelation ? Assur- 
edly Cowper had seen, had heard, had read, this 
passage before. Undoubtedly Mr. Madan, him- 
self an enlightened and rejoicing Christian, must 
have presented it to him, and dwelt upon its 
meaning. Indeed, it had always been, in the 
speculation of the theological, and the experience 
of the Christian world, as marked a fixture and 
feature of truth and proof in Christian doctrine, 
as the sun is a radiant and reigning luminary in 
the heavens. And yet, Cowper had never beheld 
it before ! But now, on the verge of a region of 



90 DIVINE ILLUMINATION. 

darkness that can be felt, through which he had 
been struggling, he saw it suddenly, transport- 
ingly, permanently. How can this be accounted 
for ? What invisible influence or agent was busy 
in the recesses of Cowper's mind, arranging its 
scenery, withdrawing its clouds, preparing its 
powers of vision, and at the same time moving in 
the recesses of that profound passage, shining be- 
hind the letter of its phrases, as behind a vast 
transparency, and pouring through it, like a sud- 
den creation, the imagery of heaven ? There is 
but one answer ; and this experience of Cowper's 
mind and heart is one of the most marked and 
wondrous instances on record, illustrative of his 
own exquisitely beautiful hymn, beginning, 

The Spirit breathes upon the Word, 
And brings the truth to sight. 

It is one of the most precious demonstrations ever 
known of that passage in which the Apostle Paul 
describes his own similar experience, and that of 
all who are ever truly converted, " For God, who 
caused the light to shine out of darkness, hath 
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ." It was one of the most marvelous and 
interesting cases of this Divine Illumination in the 
whole history of Redemption. 

Why had not Cowper seen all this before ? 



DIVINE ILLUMINATION. 91 

Because, according to God's own answer, "the 
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit 
of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither 
can he know them, because they are spiritually 
discerned." These truths were as clearly truths, 
and as well known in speculation, before that 
hour, that moment, of the shining of heaven in 
his soul, as they ever were afterward. But as 
yet they had not been revealed by the Spirit. 
But the instant God thus interposed, then could 
Cowper exclaim with Paul, "Now we have re- 
ceived not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit 
which is of God, that we might know the things 
that are freely given to us of God." First, the 
revelation of the things that are given, then the 
Spirit, that we might know them. And the reason 
why this Divine Illumination did not take place 
years before, was just because the vail was on the 
heart, and it had not turned to the Lord, that the 
vail might be taken away ; and it pleased the 
sovereign blessed will and infinite wisdom and love 
of God to lead the subject of this mighty ex- 
perience out of darkness into light by a gradual 
preparatory discipline. And yet, when the light 
came, it was as new, as surprising, as ecstatic, as 
the light of day to a man blind from his birth. 

" Unless the Almighty arm had been under 
me," says he, "I think I should have died with 
gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and 



92 



JOY IN THE LORD\ 



my voice choked with transport, I could only look 
to heaven in silence, overwhelmed with love and 
wonder. But the work of the Holy Spirit is best 
described in His own words — it was joy unspeak- 
able, and full of glory. Thus was my Heavenly 
Father in Christ Jesus pleased to give me full 
assurance of faith ; and out of a strong unbeliev- 
ing heart to raise up a child unto Abraham. How 
glad should I now have been to have spent every 
moment in prayer and thanksgiving ! I lost no 
opportunity of repairing to a throne of grace, but 
flew to it with an eagerness irresistible, and never 
to be satisfied. Could I help it ? Could I do 
otherwise than to love and rejoice in my recon- 
ciled Father in Christ Jesus ? The Lord had 
enlarged my heart, and I ran in the ways of His 
commandments. For many succeeding weeks 
tears were ready to flow, if I did but speak of 
the Gospel, or mention the name of Jesus. To 
rejoice day and night was my employment ; too 
happy to sleep much, I thought it was lost time 
that was spent in slumber. that the ardor of 
my first love had continued !" 

It was such a change, so bright, so sudden, so 
complete, so joyful, that at first his kind, Chris- 
tian and watchful physician, Dr. Cotton, was 
alarmed lest it might terminate in frenzy ; but 
he soon became convinced of the sacred sound- 
ness and permanent blissfulness of the cure. 



THE VOICE OF CHRIST. 93 

Every morning of the year lie visited his inter- 
esting and beloved patient ; and ever, in sweet 
communion, the Gospel was the delightful theme 
of their conversation. What a history of passing 
hours within the apartments of an insane hos- 
pital ! Oh, if this were the theme of communion, 
and this the instrumentality of healing oftener 
employed, how many distressed, diseased, and 
wandering spirits might have been restored that, 
neglected still, have wandered on till the wreck 
of reason became confirmed and hopeless ! The 
voice of Christ is the voice of true Science to 
every lunatic, Bring him hither to Me. 



CHAPTER VII. 

COWPER'S SURVEY OF HIS OWN CASE. — HIS REMOVAL TO HUNT- 
INGDON. — HIS HAPPY EXPERIENCE THERE. — SCENES OF TEE 
COMPOSITION OF HIS EARLIEST HYMNS. — PREPARATION FOR HIS 
WORK. 

" Oh the fever of the brain !" exclaimed Cowper 
in one of his beautiful letters to Lady Hesketh, 
after his recovery; " to feel the quenching of that 
tire is indeed a blessing which I think it impossible 
to receive without the most consummate grati- 
tude." "My affliction has taught me a road to 
happiness which, without it, I should never have 
found." Cowper then refers to the rumor which 
was put in circulation, and has not ceased in some 
hands to be passed as current from that day to 
this, although, like a counterfeit bill long in use, it 
is now nearly worn out, that his madness was the 
cause of his religion, instead of religion being the 
cure of his madness. He says, " It gives me some 
concern, though at the same time it increases my 
gratitude, to reflect that a convert made in Bedlam 
is more likely to be a stumbling-block to others 
than to advance their faith. But he who can as- 



cowper's survey. 95 

cribe an amendment of life and manners and a ref- 
ormation of the heart itself to madness, is gnilty 
of an absurdity that in any other case would fasten 
the imputation of madness upon himself/' 

Cowper speaks of the belief, or rather the vain 
imagination entertained by multitudes, that a per- 
son needed no such change as that of conversion in 
order to be a Christian. " You think I always be- 
lieved, and I thought so too ; but you were de- 
ceived, and so was I. I called myself, indeed, a 
Christian, but He who knows my heart knoivs that 
I never did a right thing, nor abstained from a 
torong one, because I was so ; but if I did either, 
it was under the influence of some other motive." 
This is a most impressive and searching remark ; 
it goes to the inmost condition of every unchanged 
heart, the native condition of every heart ; and it 
shows with what profound and thorough a sweep 
of analysis Cowper had been taught to survey the 
elements of his own character. He adds, "It is 
such seeming Christians, such pretending believ- 
ers, that do most mischief in the cause of its ene- 
mies, and furnish the strongest arguments to sup- 
port their infidelity. Unless profession and conduct 
go together, the man's life is a lie, and the validity 
of what he professes is itself called in question. 
The difference between a Christian and an unbe- 
liever would be so striking, if the treacherous allies 
of the Church would go over at once to the other 



96 



cowper's survey 



side, that I am satisfied religion would be no loser 
by the bargain." 

In the survey of his case, Cowper rejoiced with 
gratitude in the providential care with which it 
pleased God to assign his treatment not to any 
London physician, but to a man so affectionate 
and experienced as Dr. Cotton. " I was not only 
treated by him with the greatest tenderness while 
I was ill, and attended with the utmost diligence, 
but when my reason was restored to me, and I had 
so much need of a religious friend to converse with, 
to whom I could open my mind upon the subject 
without reserve, I could hardly have found a better 
person for the purpose. My eagerness and anxiety 
to settle my opinions on that long-neglected point, 
made it necessary that while my mind was yet weak 
and my spirits uncertain I should have some assist- 
ance. The doctor was as ready to administer relief 
in this article likewise, and as well gratified to do 
it as in that which was immediately his province. 
But how many physicians would have thought this 
an irregular appetite, and a symptom of remain- 
ing madness ! But if it were so, my friend was as 
mad as myself, and it is well for me that he was 
so. My dear cousin, you know not half the deliv- 
erances I have received ; my brother is the only 
one in the family who does. My recovery is, in- 
deed, a signal one, and my future life must express 
my thankfulness, for by words I can not do it." 



OF HIS OWN CASE. 97 

The remark concerning Cowper's brother is ex- 
ceedingly interesting and instructive, taken in con- 
nection with his own remarkable conversion five 
years later. It was the sight and knowledge of 
what Cowper passed through ; those depths of an- 
guish and despair beneath the burden of his guilt 
in the valley of the shadow of death, where the 
kindest and most affectionate of brothers could do 
nothing for him, and could not even understand 
the causes of his gloom, or the means and the pro- 
cess of his recovery and joy ; that began to awaken 
that brother's own suspicions that in his own case 
all was not right, and set him upon investigating 
the subject of religion with an attention he had 
never before paid to it, though he had been a cler- 
gyman of the Church of England, with a pastoral 
charge, for several years. This was not the least 
remarkable of the chain of providences to which 
Cowper often reverted with adoring gratitude and 
love, though it was not known till the thrilling 
disclosure of his brother's conflicts, doubts, dis- 
tresses, and, at length, rejoicing faith in his sick 
and dying hours, how God had been dealing with 
him and leading him onward. Cowper's brother 
had been but a weeping and helpless spectator in 
Ms trials ; but Cowper himself had been prepared 
of Grod to be a ministering angel to the anguished 
spirit of his brother, when it came his turn to pass 
through the gloomy experience of condemnation 



98 SPIRITUAL JOY. 

under guilt, and afterward through death itself to 
life eternal. In many a sense Cowper could write, 

Blind unbelief is sure to err 

And scan His work in vain ; 
God is His own interpreter 

And He will make it plain. 

Karely in the history of God's grace has there 
been a picture of such complete, unmingled, celes- 
tial peace and joy in believing, as seems to have 
filled the soul of Cowper, when it first pleased God 
to shine into his heart with "the light of the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ/' 
The vail was taken away, and he beheld with a 
happiness passing all power of description, the 
glory of the Lord, and was changed into the same 
image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord. 
Oh that this might have lasted to the end! was 
his very natural wish concerning that season of 
ecstatic heavenly enjoyment. 

And at first thought we are ready to repeat the 
same wish ; but then comes the reflection that 
such is not God's discipline with us, nor, consider- 
ing the way in which a Christian is established and 
perfected or made useful, by any possibility can 
be ; and then, again, the remembrance that if it 
had thus continued the world could never have 
possessed, from Cowper at least, that sweetest and 
noblest of Christian poems, " The Task." It was 



SPIRITUAL JOY. 99 

a larger discipline of trials, and of spiritual sorrow 
intermingle d, that must prepare the mind and 
heart of Cowper for the work God had for him to 
do. Other processes, deep, secret, unseen, un- 
known, were to pass within the soil, rough and 
painful at the time, and rarely resting, before it 
could be fitted for the creation of that precious 
fruit. 

But if ever a saint on earth knew the whole 
meaning of that expression, a first love, it was 
Cowper. There was nothing, ever after, to sur- 
pass it. The perfect day, even if Cowj3er had 
come to it on earth, and had continued to enjoy 
it, could never on earth have been arrayed in such 
intense, attractive loveliness, as the beauty, the 
peacefulness, the sweetness, the purity, and the 
heavenly colors of that morning without clouds, 
after a night of such blackness, driving tempest, 
and distracting madness and despair. It was this 
heavenly experience to which Cowper looks back 
with such mournful longings, in the most sacredly 
beautiful and widely known perhaps of all the 
hymns in our language : 

Where is the blessedness I knew 

When first I saw the Lord ? 
Where is that soul-refreshing view 

Of Jesus and His Word ? 

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed ! 

How sweet their memory still I 
But they have left an aching void 

The world can never filL 






100 COMMUNION WITH GOD; 

These two verses are a parenthesis of prayer, the 
full meaning of which, only he who wrote these 
stanzas, looking back to the blissfulness and glory 
of his earliest experience, could fully understand. 
But the yearning desire, for a closer walk with 
God ! is the breathing of every Christian heart. 
In this serene and happy frame after his re- 
covery, Cowper remained twelve months still with 
Dr. Cotton at St. Albans. Meanwhile he had re- 
solved, by God's help, never to return to London, 
and, for this purpose, that no obligation might 
rest upon him to resume his residence there, he 
resigned the office of Commissioner of Bankrupts, 
which he held at a salary of sixty pounds per 
annum, although this procedure left him with an 
income so small as to be hardly sufficient for his 
maintenance. His beloved brother resided at 
Cambridge, and at Cowper's desire made many 
unsuccessful attempts to procure for him a suit- 
able dwelling in the neighborhood of the Univer- 
sity. Cowper now mentions a day in which, with 
great earnestness, he poured out his soul to God 
in prayer, beseeching him, that wherever it should 
please God in His Fatherly mercy to lead him, it 
might be into the society of those who feared His 
name, and loved the Lord Jesus in sincerity and 
truth. What followed he regarded as a proof of 
God's gracious acceptance of that prayer, having 
received immediate information of lodgings taken 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 101 

for him at Huntingdon, about sixteen miles from 
Cambridge, where God, he says, like an indulgent 
Father, had ordered every thing for him, and had 
prepared for him a more comfortable place of 
residence than he could have chosen for himself. 

Thus, after more than eighteen months spent 
at St. Albans, he set out for Cambridge and Hun- 
tingdon, taking with him an affectionate servant, 
who had watched over him during his whole ill- 
ness, and who earnestly begged to be permitted 
still to be with him. He passed the whole time 
of the way in silent communion with God ; and 
those hours, he says, were among the happiest he 
had ever known. " It is impossible to tell/' is the 
strong language of Cowper, " with how delightful 
a sense of His protection and fatherly care of me 
it pleased the Almighty to favor me during the 
whole of my journey." In this happy frame of 
mind he took possession of his lodgings at Hun- 
tingdon, whither his brother accompanied him 
from Cambridge on Saturday, and then bade him 
farewell. 

And now, like a little child left alone for the 
first time among strangers, his heart began to 
sink within him, and he wandered forth into the 
fields melancholy and desponding at the close of 
the day, but, like Isaac at eventide, found his 
heart so powerfully drawn to God that, having 
encountered a secluded spot beneath a bank of 



102 COMMUNION WITH GOD. 

shrubbery and verdure, he kneeled down and 
poured out his whole soul in prayer and praise. 
It pleased the Saviour to hear him, and to grant 
him at once a renewed sense of His presence, a de- 
liverance from his fears, and a sweet submissive 
assurance that wherever his lot might be cast, the 
God of all consolation would still be with him. 

The next day was the Sabbath, and he attended 
church the first time since his recovery, and of 
course the first time for nearly two years, and he 
found the House of God to be the very gate to 
Heaven. He could scarcely restrain his emotions 
during the service, so fully did he see the beauty 
of the glory of the Lord. A person with whom 
he afterward became acquainted sat near him, 
devoutly engaged in the exercises of Divine Wor- 
ship, and Cowper beholding him, loved him for 
the earnestness of his manner. " While he was 
singing the Psalms," Cowper says, " I looked at 
him, and observing him intent upon his holy em- 
ployment, I could not help saying in my heart 
with much emotion, The Lord bless you for prais- 
ing Him whom my soul loveth." 

Oh, this was the very spirit and temper of the 
saints and angels in glory ; and, indeed, such 
was the goodness of the Lord to Cowper, that 
though his own voice was stopped in silence by 
the very intensity of his feeling, yet his soul sang 
within him, and leaped for joy. By the good pro- 



COMMUNION WITH GOD. 103 

vidence of God, the reading of the Gospel for the 
day happened to be the Parable of the Prodigal 
Son, and Cowper felt the whole scene realized 
with himself, and acted over in his own heart ; 
and the joy and power of the Word of God, with 
that heart thus quickened by the Holy Spirit to 
receive it, were more than he could well support. 
He hastened immediately after church to that 
solitary place in the fields where he had found 
such sacred enjoyment in prayer the day before, 
and now he found tlfat even that was but the 
earnest of a richer blessing. "How," exclaims 
Cowper, " shall I express what the Lord did for 
me, except by saying that He made all his good- 
ness to pass before me. I seemed to speak to Him 
face to face, as a man converseth with his friend, 
except that my speech was only in tears of joy and 
groanings which can not be uttered. I could say 
indeed with Jacob, not how dreadful, but how 
lovely is this place ! this is none other than the 
house of God !" 

There, in this sacred spot, and in the deep de- 
light of such devout and blissful experience, is the 
very locality and atmosphere of that perfectly 
beautiful hymn which Cowper wrote, entitled 
" Ketirement." There was. the calm retreat ; there 
the unwitnessed praise ; there the peace, and joy, 
and love ; there the holy discipline of communion 
with the Saviour, by which He prepared His serv- 



104 



RETIREMENT. 



ant to pour forth the gratitude of a redeemed 
spirit in strains which would be sung by the Church 
of God on earth till the whole Church sing in 
heaven. If all of Cowper's sufferings and joy had 
yielded but the fruit of that one hymn, it had been 
cheaply purchased. God ordained him those suf- 
ferings, and gave him those seasons of mercy, that 
he might write it. But that was not the only fruit, 
though perhaps the most perfect, of such heavenly 
experience ; and God was now preparing not only 
the inward frame, but the* external circumstances 
of His chosen child, for that unexampled, exquisite, 
and important work of Christian Poetry which He 
had for him to accomplish. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FIRST ACQUAINTANCE AND DOMESTICATION WITH THE UNWIN FAM- 
ILY.-^REMOVAL TO OLNEY, AND INTIMATE FRIENDSHIP WITH 
NEWTON. — COWPER'S ACTIVE AND BENEVOLENT RELIGIOUS HAB- 
ITS, — COMPOSITION OF THE OLNEY HYMNS. 

For some months after he had taken lodgings in 
Huntingdon, he was very closely retired from so- 
ciety, having little more than the visits of his be- 
loved brother from Cambridge, who, as it afterward 
appeared, was himself, even then, blindly groping 
for the way of life, though not willing to acknowl- 
edge it. With him, as often as Cowper saw him, 
which was once or twice a week, he conversed on 
the leading themes of the Gospel, though for five 
years the arguments and experience of Cowper 
seemed to have little effect upon him. Except 
these visits, and those of one or two acquaintances, 
whom Cowper playfully described in his letter to 
his cousin, Lady Hesketh, as odd, scrambling fel- 
lows like himself, he had little intercourse with the 
neighbors, but increasing communion with his God 
in Christ Jesus. With Him his solitude was 
sweet, and the "wilderness blossomed as the rose." 

5* 



106 INTRODUCTION TO 

"I am much happier," said fce, in a letter to Major 
Cowper, " than the day is long, and sunshine and 
candlehght alike see me perfectly contented." 

But God had still a sweeter change for him, and 
under the sanction and the power of prayer, by 
the direct guiding providence of God he was un- 
expectedly brought into an intimate friendship, 
which fixed the whole course and habitation of his 
future life. There had been settled for many years 
in Huntingdon an interesting and delightful Chris- 
tian family, consisting of the Kev. Mr. Unwin, a 
worthy divine, somewhat advanced in years, his 
wife, an accomplished, intelligent, and admirable 
woman, and their two children, a son and daughter. 
William Cawthorne Unwin, the son, was at this 
time about twenty-one years of age, and a student 
at Cambridge, looking forward to the ministry. 
Being irresistibly attracted, while in Huntingdon, 
by Cowper's appearance at church and in his soli- 
tary walks, he at length gained his acquaintance ; 
and to his inexpressible joy, Cowper found in him 
a sharer in his own most intimate feelings of de- 
votion, and one whom the Lord had been training 
from his infancy to the service of the temple. 
After their very first interview and interchange of 
hearts, Cowper prayed God, who had been the au- 
thor, to be the guardian of their friendship, and 
to give it fervency and perpetuity even unto death. 
An introduction to the family immediately fol- 



THE UN WIN FAMILY. 107 

lowed, and this was the beginning of that precious 
and invaluable Christian friendship with Mrs. Un- 
win, which was to last through life, connecting the 
two in an existence of endearment so affectionate, 
so singularly intimate, yet so pure, so disinterested, 
so heavenly, that nothing can be found in mortal 
story to compare with it. 

At the outset Cowper thanked God for those 
Christian friends as his choicest external blessing, 
though as yet he had no thought of any thing fur- 
ther than a friendly intercourse with the family as 
a neighbor. But after four months had passed in 
his solitary lodgings, he one day found his mind 
beclouded with darkness, and that intimate com- 
munion he had so long been enabled to maintain 
with Grod was suddenly interrupted. Almost as 
suddenly it occurred to him, and in a manner which 
made him ascribe it to the divine suggesting provi- 
dence of the same gracious Lord who had brought 
him to Huntingdon, that he might possibly find a 
place in Mr. Unwin's family as a boarder. A young 
gentleman who had been residing there as a pupil, 
had gone the day before to Cambridge, and Cow- 
per. thought it possible he might be permitted to 
succeed him. It shows in how sensitive and pre- 
cariously delicate a state his mind then was, and 
how much he needed the soothing care and tender- 
ness of confiding Christian friends, that from the 
moment this thought struck him, he was in such a 



108 REMOVAL TO OLNEY. 

tumult of anxious solicitude that for some days he 
could not direct his mind to any other subject. At 
length, after much prayer and no little conflict and 
distress in the fear and sense of unsubmissiveness 
to God's will, in case the blessing should not be 
granted, his heart was calmed, the negotiation was 
entered into with the Unwins, and he became the 
happiest inmate of their domestic circle. 

Nearly two years ran on uninterrupted, in sweet 
social and Christian enjoyment and growth in 
grace, when Mr. Unwin, the head of the family, 
was thrown from his horse, and most suddenly and 
unexpectedly hurried into eternity. This over- 
whelming affliction was followed by a change in the 
abode of the whole family from Huntingdon to 
Olney, the dwelhng-place and scene of the pastoral 
labors of one of the most eminent men of God 
then living, John Newton ; a man fitted to com- 
mune with, and guide, and bless the mind and 
heart of Cowper, in his progress on the way to 
heaven, even through the valley of the shadow of 
death. By the same divine providence that had so 
remarkably led them both thus far, the steps of 
Newton, at that time a stranger to Cowper, were 
directed to his abode a few days after the calami- 
tous event of Mr. Unwinds death. The proposal 
was then suggested for the removal of the residence 
of the family to Olney ; and the thing having been 
resolved upon, Newton engaged for them a houso 



FRIENDSHIP WITH NEWTON. 109 

near his own dwelling, to which they removed the 
14th of October, 1767. There Cowper spent near 
twenty years of mingled sorrow and joy ; there first 
his poetical powers were fully developed ; there he 
passed through unfathomed abysses of darkness and 
despair ; and there, under the discipline of God's 
hand, and the guidance of God's grace, the most 
precious and perfect fruit of his genius bloomed and 
was ripened. 

Of the providences by which the intimate friend- 
ship between Cowper and Newton was established, 
the latter beautifully spoke in his preface to the 
first published volume of Cowper's poetry, declar- 
ing at the same time his own estimate of the value 
of that friendship. " By these steps," says New- 
ton, "the good hand of God, unknown to me, was 
providing for me one of the principal blessings of 
my life ; a friend and a counselor, in whose com- 
pany for almost seven years, though we were seldom 
seven successive hours separated, I always found 
new pleasure ; a friend who was not only a com- 
fort to myself, but a blessing to the affectionate 
poor people among whom I then lived." At a still 
later period of their friendship, indeed, after the 
death of Cowper, and in a memoir of the poet 
which Newton began to write, but never finished, 
he speaks of him as follows : " For nearly twelve 
years we were seldom separated for twelve hours at 
a time, when we were awake and at home : the 



110 HABITS AT OLNKY. 

first six I passed in daily admiring and attempting 
to imitate him ; during the second six, I walked 
pensively with him in the valley of the shadow of 
death/' Again he gives us a vivid and bright 
glimpse of Cowper's habits of life during those six 
delightful years especially, while almost without a 
cloud, he walked in the light of his Redeemer's 
countenance. " He loved the poor. He often vis- 
ited them in their cottages, conversed with them in 
the most condescending manner, sympathized with 
them, counseled and comforted them in their dis- 
tresses ; and those who were seriously disposed were 
often cheered and animated by his prayers." 

It is with a singular feeling, combining a mix- 
ture of astonishment, admiration, anxiety, doubt, 
and most affectionate religious interest, that the 
mind presents to itself a picture of the poet Cow- 
per engaging in those social religious duties. Re- 
membering the period of madness he had passed 
through, and the sensitive shyness of his nature, 
the instinctive and habitual abhorrence with which 
he shrank from any thing approximating to any 
public exposure of himself or his feelings, we trem- 
ble for him as in imagination we see him in the 
social prayer-meeting and at the bedside of the 
sick, engaging in • exercises which afterward, for 
the greater period of his life, from the recurrence 
of his malady, no power on earth could have pre- 
vailed with him to undertake. And the fact that 



H A.B ITS AT O L N E Y . Ill 

it was then and for so long a time the choice of 
his heart and the happiness of his life to engage in 
those duties, shows as convincingly as his own de- 
scription of the early blessedness he knew in com- 
munion with his Saviour, how commanding, ab- 
sorbing, triumphant and complete the work of 
Divine grace had been with him. It could trans- 
figure even such a timid, shrinking, trembling na- 
ture, just emerged from the terrific and tremendous 
gloom of absolute insanity into a fearless and sym- 
pathizing angel of mercy. 

The errands of such an angel might have been 
deemed too arduous for a mind so finely toned, so 
easily thrown from its balance, and disposed to a 
mental disorder so terrible and unfathomable. 
But not the least evil result ever seems to have 
followed from these habits, these efforts ; though 
at first it could not but have been a painful 
task to Cowper to step forth from the depths of his 
retirement on any social mission whatever. But 
Mr. Newton was with him, and their prayers and 
Christian confidence, communion and enjoyment, 
were as the exercises of one mind ; and beyond 
question the discipline proved a most strengthen- 
ing and beneficial one both to his intellect and 
heart. At any rate it was his Saviour's dealing 
with him ; it was the same Divine wisdom that 
led the same heavenly Physician to appoint the 
restored madman from his wanderings among the 



112 cowper's hymns. 

tombs in Judea to an instant and difficult mission 
among the wild and wicked sinners of Decapolis. 
But Cowper's was a gentle, mild, and quiet walk 
of mercy among the sorrowing and the poor. Be- 
yond a doubt the discipline of such kindly minis- 
trations had a blessed ministering quality upon 
himself, as well as the discipline of his own sor- 
rows, in enriching and baptizing his poetical ge- 
nius, and preparing him with a wider and more 
varied experience for the composition of " The 
Task." 

The happy years of his life at Huntingdon and 
Olney, between 1765, the period of his recovery 
from the awful gloom and despair of his first mad- 
ness, and 1773, the period of the first recurrence 
of that dread mysterious malady, were the time of 
the composition of the " Olney Hymns." And if 
Cowper had never given to the Church on earth 
but a single score of fhose exquisite breathings of 
a pious heart and creations of his own genius, it 
had been a bequest worth a life of suffering to ac- 
complish. The dates, or nearly such, of some of 
those pieces were preserved, so that we are enabled 
to trace them to the frames and circumstances of 
the writer's mind and heart, and to see in them an 
exact reflection of his own experience. The very 
first that he composed after his recovery at St. 
Alban's, is said to have been the beautiful hymn 
entitled the " Happy Change," of which the two 



cowpeb's hymns. 113 

following stanzas are sweetly descriptive of his own 
restoration : 

How blest Thy creature- is, God, 

When, with a single eye, 
He views the lustre of Thy word, 
The day-spring from on high! 

The soul, a dreary province once 

Of Satan's dark domain, 
Feels a new empire formed within, 

And owns a heavenly reign. 

But the second strain, in which he poured forth 
an experience of joy unspeakable and full of glory, 
— " Far from the world, Lord, I flee" — is sweeter 
still ; indeed, beyond comparison more perfect : it 
is exquisitely, sacredly, devoutly beautiful. The 
last of those compositions is said to have been the 
hymn beginning, " God moves in a mysterious 
way;" and there is a sublimity of interest attached 
to it, besides the native grandeur and beauty of 
the piece, because we are assured that it was sug- 
gested and framed under a presentiment of his 
recurring darkness and insanity of mind. He had 
been meditating, and doubtless praying, in one of 
his accustomed solitary walks in the open fields, 
when that foreboding impression fell upon him ; 
but before it deepened into the black unfathom- 
able gloom that his soul apprehended, he composed 
that most touching expression of his confidence in 
God and resignation to the Divine will. It was 



114 



OLNEY HYMNS. 



beneath the distant thunder of that impending 
tempest, and by its gloomy lightning, that he 
wrote the words, 

He plants His footsteps in the sea, 
And rides upon the storm. 

And even in that forboding ominous state of mind, 
which was followed indeed by the darkness of an 
almost total echpse for three years, and a suspen- 
sion of his powers and a lurid gloom for near four 
years longer, he closed the hymn with that confid- 
ing prediction, 

God is His own interpreter, 
And He will make it plain. 

Could ever mortal under more sublime and affect- 
ing circumstances, utter the words, " My times are 
in Thy hands I" That hymn was entitled " Light 
shining out of darkness/' Never could Cowper 
have composed it at such a period, had he not pre- 
viously been instructed, subdued, and disciplined, 
and taught the exercise of a lasting and submis- 
sive faith through all changes, by an experience 
of the deepest sorrow and the sweetest joy. It was 
an experience winch we find recorded in such 
hymns as that entitled " Afflictions sanctified by 
the Word," closing with that sweet stanza, 

I love Thee, therefore, my God, 
And breathe toward Thy dear abode ; 
Where, in Thy presence fully blest, 
Thy chosen saints forever rest ; 



OLNEY HYMNS. 115 

and in that entitled, " Looking upward in a storm," 
and beginning, 

God of my life, to Thee I call ; 
Afflicted at Thy feet I faU; 
When the great water-floods prevail 
Leave not my trembling heart to fail;' 

and in that entitled " Peace after a storm/' con- 
taining the stanza, 

let me then at length be taught 

What I am still so slow to learn, 
That God is love, and changes not, 

Nor knows the shadow of a turn ; 

and in that entitled " Temptation," and beginning, 
" The billows swell, the winds are high," and end- 
ing with the stanza, 

Though tempest-tossed, and half a wreck, 
My Saviour through the floods I seek, 
Let neither wind nor stormy main 
Force back my shattered- bark again. 

Out of the same experience grew the hymn on 
" Submission :" 

' Lord, my best desire fulfill. 

And there is one of painful interest, entitled " The 
valley of the shadow of death," expressive of the 
sadness and dismay of the soul beneath the smoke 
and fiery arrows that reach their mark in the throb- 
bing heart, and fill it with inexpressible anguish. 
There are others that describe with equal power, 



116 



OLNEY HYMNS. 



and a serene and melodious harmony of joy, the 
peace and happiness of the soul in believing, and 
the sudden and surprising light that rises out of 
gloom upon the Christian, as a season of clear shin- 
ing after rain. The whole collection, both of New- 
ton's and of Cowper's hymns, is admirable ; but the 
tracing of the path of Cowper's genius and piety 
by what may be called the trail of his sufferings, 
is one of the most interesting and endearing invest- 
igations in all the records of biography. 

Some of these hymns should be read in imme- 
diate connection with Cowper's own description of 
his religious experience ; such as those entitled 
" Praise for faith ;" the " Heart healed and changed 
by mercy ;" the hymn on " Betirement ;" the " Happy 
change." Indeed, they all grew out of experience. 
The theology in these hymns, the sense they ex- 
press of dependence on God, the way in which 
Divine Grace reveals the Saviour, the knowledge 
of the heart, and its heavenly healing, the native 
blindness, and the new created light, and the 
power of spiritual vision, the divine discipline, 
both of providence and grace, the various moods 
and dangers of the Christian conflict, the yearn- 
ings of the heart after God and heaven, and the 
fervent love of Christ, and affectionate confiding 
faith in his blood ; all are taught by the Divine 
Spirit ; nothing is at second hand. We have the 
graphic picture of Cowper's own Christian life, the 




OLNEY HYMNS. 117 



life of faith, and its conflicts too, which are parts 
so essential of its life; we have its formation, 
its happiness, and its trials. Some of Cowper/s 
hymns are very much like Newton's ; as, for 
example, the familiar hut graphic and most 
truthful description he has given, in such brief 
compass, of the sinner's legal blindness and gra- 
cious deliverance. We quote it, because it is 
really a rapid sketch of his own case, his own 
history : 

Sin enslaved me many years, . 

And led me bound and blind, / 

Till at length a thousand fears 

Came swarming o'er my mind. 
"Where, said I in deep distress, 

Will these sinful pleasures end ? 
How shall I secure my peace, 

And make the Lord my friend ? 

Friends and ministers said much 

The Gospel to enforce ; 
But my blindness still was such, 

I chose a legal course ; 
Much I fasted, watched and strove, 

Scarce would show my face abroad, 
Feared almost to speak or move, 

A stranger still to God. 

Thus, afraid to trust His grace, 

Long time did I rebel, i 

Till, despairing of my case, 

Down at His feet I fell. 
Then my stubborn heart He broke, 

And subdued me to His sway ; 
By a single word He spoke, 

Thy sins are done away. 



118 OLNEY HYMNS. 

How beautiful, as an experimental hymn, drawn in 
like manner from his own history, is the one en- 
titled " My soul thirsteth for God ;" also the one en- 
titled " Dependence ;" also "The new convert;" 
and " The welcome cross ;" and " The exhortation 
to prayer ;" and " Jesus hastening to suffer ;" and 
" The waiting soul," and that affecting hymn en- 
titled " Looking upward in a storm," so similar to 
the equally graphic hymn on " Temptation." Let 
us select this as an example of the tone of sadness 
and depression that prevails in some of. these out- 
pourings of Cowper's heart, and contrast the criti- 
cism of Southey that it was dangerous to the 
Poet, considering the mental malady under which 
he had suffered, to be engaged in writing on such 
subjects ! Southey seemed to regard every expres- 
sion of grief on account of sin and of anguish 
under its burden, every lamentation of insensibil- 
ity, and every tone of mourning on account of 
prevailing unbelief and darkness, as an indication 
that Cowjoer was again upon the verge of madness. 
He could not or would not understand either the 
joy or the grief of Cowper's Christian experience ; 
a vapid and desolate experience indeed it would 
have been if destitute of both ; yet to this frigid 
condition must it have been reduced, in order to 
escape the charge of a feverish enthusiasm. The 
heart that has learned neither understanding nor 
sympathy in the Christian conflict can have known 



OLNEY HYMNS. 119 

little of Christianity itself, little or nothing of a 
true Christian experience. What sweeter internal 
evidence of the genuineness and depth of Cowper's 
piety can we conceive than the pathetic pleadings 
of his soul poured forth in stanzas like the fol- 
lowing : 

God of my life, to Thee I call, 
Afflicted at Thy feet I fall ; 
"When the great water-floods prevail, 
Leave not my trembling heart to fail I 

Friend of the friendless and the faint ! 
Where should I lodge my deep complaint? 
Where, but with Thee, whose open door 
Invites the helpless and the poor. 

Did ever mourner plead with Thee 
And Thou refuse that mourner's plea ? 
Does not the Word still fixed remain 
That none shall seek Thy face in vain ? 

That were a grief I could not bear, 
Didst Thou not hear and answer prayer ; 
But a prayer-hearing answering God 
Supports me under every load. 

Fair is the lot that 's cast for me ; 
I have an advocate with Thee ; 
They whom the world caresses most 
Have no such privilege to boast. 

Poor though I am, despised, forgot, 
Yet God, my God, forgets me not ; 
And He is safe, and must succeed, 
For whom the Lord vouchsafes to plead. 

The unhappy, ill-natured, almost malignant 
tone sometimes assumed by Southey in his criti- 



120 OLNEY HYMNS. 

cisms on Cowper's malady, and in his remarks on 
the tender religious sympathy and care of his 
friends, reminds us of Saul under the gloom of an 
evil spirit, casting javelins at Jonathan and David. 
The perversity of prejudice, almost making a fool 
of the critic, even in the very sphere in which he 
prided himself on his superior discrimination, has 
rarely ever been displayed so grossly as in the fol- 
lowing paragraph in regard to the Olney Hymns, 
and Newton's influence over Cowper : — " Mr. 
Thornton took a thousand copies for distribu- 
tion ; but Cowper 's influence would never have 
been extended beyond the sphere in which those 
hymns circulated, and would have been little 
there, if he himself had continueQl under the id- 
fluence of Mr. Newton. Mr. Newton would not 
have thought of encouraging him to exercise his 
genius in any thing but devotional poetry ; and 
he found it impossible to engage him again in 
that, because of the unhappy form which his 
hallucination had assumed/' 

If Cowper had never written a single line be- 
yond the four or five hymns in the Olney Collec- 
tion, beginning " The Spirit breathes upon the 
Word," " Far from the world, Lord, I flee," 
" for a closer walk with God," " God moves 
in a mysterious way," and " There is a foun- 
tain filled with blood," the gift of those four or 
five hymns to the Church of God by Cowper's 



OLNEY HYMNS. 121 

sanctified genius, through Newton's instrumental- 
ity, would have been a greater and more precious 
gift for literature and religion, perhaps, than all 
his biographer's voluminous writings put together. 
Be this as it may, there is no apology that can be 
given for the distorting and discoloring bitter- 
ness with which the attempt has sometimes been 
made to caricature such piety as was manifested 
in the experience and life of Christians like Wes- 
ley, Whitefield, Lady Huntingdon, Newton, and 
Cowper. 

6 



CHAPTER IX. 

MYSTERY AND MEANING OP THE DIVINE DISCDPLINE WITH CO"W- 
PER. — HIS ACCOUNT OP HIMSELP. — INSTRUCTIVE INTEREST OP 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

No name in the annals of literature inspires a 
deeper personal interest than that of Cowper. A 
mystery still hangs around the malady that 
shrouded his mind in gloom, deepened at intervals 
into madness. It was a mystery quite impene- 
trahle before the publication of his own memoir 
of his remarkable conversion ; a memoir that brings 
us to a point where the rest of his life and his per- 
sonal experiences are clearly traced by his own 
letters. These form the most interesting collection 
to be found in any literature in the world. Not 
only the origin and progress of his various literal 
designs, and of the productions of his genius, but 
the different phases of his mental disorder, are to 
be traced step by step. It is the investigation of 
that derangement, so peculiar, so continued, so 
profound, that forms the province of deepest inter- 
est in the study of his biography ; an investigation 



THE STRICKEN DEER. 128 

disclosing scenes of the divine providence in man's 
discipline, most solemn and instructive. 

In one of his letters to his friend Unwin, Cowper 
quoted a Latin adage that he remembered, which 
he said would have made a good motto for his poem 
of " Betirement." Bene vixit qui bene latuit — 
he has lived well who has been wisely hidden. It 
might be applied to Cowper's whole life, withdrawn 
by Divine Providence from the busy world, but es- 
pecially to that part of it so sweetly hid with Christ 
in God, when Cowper first fled from the world and 
abode beneath the shadow of the Almighty. God 
withdrew him from society to prepare him for the 
work he had appointed for him to accomplish. 

In the third book of the " Task," entitled the 
Garden, there occurs that exquisitely beautiful and 
affecting passage, which Cowper himself has noted 
in the argument to the book, with the words, Some 
account of myself. It has been a thousand times 
read, a thousand times quoted, yet the thousandth 
time with not less interest than before : 



I was a stricken deer, that left the herd 
Long since ; with many an arrow deep infixed 
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew 
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. 
There was T found by one who had Himself 
Been hurt by the archers. In His side he bore, 
And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars. 
With gentle force soliciting the darts, 
He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live. 
Since then, with few associates, in remote 



124 



THE DREAM OF LIFE. 



And silent woods I wander, far from those 
My former partners of the peopled scene : 
"With few associates, and not wishing more. 
Here much I ruminate, as much I may, 
"With other views of men and manners now 
Than once, and others of a life to come. 
I see that all are wanderers ; gone astray, 
Each in his own delusions ; they are lost 
In chase of fancied happiness, still wooed, 
And never won. Dream after dream ensues ; 
And still they dream that they shall still succeed, 
And still are disappointed. Rings the world 
With tho vain stir. I sum up half mankind 
And add two thirds of the remaining half, 
And find the total of their hopes and fears 
Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay 
As if created only like the fly, 
That spreads his motely wings in the eye of noon, 
To sport their season, and be seen no more. 
The rest are sober dreamers, grave and wise, 
And pregnant with discoveries new and rare. 
* * * * * * 

Ah ! what is life, thus spent ? and what are they, 
But frantic, who thus spend it, all for smoke ? 
Eternity for bubbles proves at last 
A senseless bargain. When I see such games 
Played by the creatures of a Power who swears 
That He will judge the earth, and call the fool 
To a sharp reckoning that has lived in vain ; 
And when I weigh their seeming wisdom well, 
And prove it in the infallible result 
So hollow and so false, I feel my heart 
Dissolve in pity, and account the learn'd, 
If this be learning, most of all deceived. 
Great crimes alarm tho conscience, but it sleeps, 
While thoughtful man is plausibly amused. 
Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I, 
From reveries so airy, from the toil 
Of dropping buckets into empty wells, 
And growing old in drawing nothing up. 



GRACE ABOUNDING. 125 

We derive the materials for this continued in- 
vestigation from Cowper himself. Up to the pe- 
riod of his recovery from the first attack of madness, 
and the time of his serene and happy settlement in 
Huntingdon, we have his own life, and the move- 
ments of his mind and heart, recorded by himself 
with a good degree of minuteness, and a faithful, 
unsparing severity of moral self-judgment. From 
that period to the second access of mental disorder 
and profound gloom, we have his own letters, the 
Olney Hymns, and that very important development 
of his life unintentionally afforded in his own deeply 
interesting and affecting memoir of the life, con- 
version, and death of his beloved brother at Cam- 
bridge. The autobiography, in which the whole 
and only correct account of his first insanity is con- 
tained, with all that led to it, and all that followed 
it, forms one of the most thrilling, instructive, and 
valuable pieces of a similar nature, next to Bun- 
yan's " Grace Abounding," to be found in the En- 
glish language. Indeed, in some respects it is even 
more wonderful than that, and equally precious as 
a record of the grace of God. It was written by 
Cowper in an interval of clear light, in the enjoy- 
ment of the presence of the Saviour, in the serenest 
peace of mind, in the exercise of an unclouded 
judgment passing sentence on the transactions that 
rose before his memory. 

It is the only revelation of the dealings of Divine 



126 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

jorovidence and grace, the only solution of otherwise 
unmingled, insolvable mysteries or contradictions. 
Neglecting or concealing that revelation, men have 
attempted to charge Cowper's lunacy of mind upon 
what they have called the gloom or fanaticism of his 
evangelical belief and experience. But the auto- 
biography and the letters, instead of throwing the 
blame of his madness on the type or the fervor of his 
religion, cast that burden wholly and distinctly on 
his state of prayerlessness, impenitence, unbelief, 
and alienation from Grod, and present his religious 
experience as the only cure of his mental malady, 
the only lasting relief from his misery and dark- 
ness. They show that religious anxiety had nothing 
to do with exciting Cowper's derangement, or pro- 
ducing it at its origin, or exasperating it when de- 
veloped ; but, on the contrary, that the suicidal 
despair, which was the result of a complication of 
distresses of mind, heart, sensibilities, and nervous 
system, from which all reh'gious impressions were 
absolutely excluded, was itself, when God had 
spared his life, the overruled and merciful occasion 
of his first salutary, deep conviction of sin ; was 
indeed the cause of an entire change in the position 
of his being, such a change as brought him at 
length to a calm, submissive resting on the bosom 
of his Saviour, a release from darkness into the light 
of heaven, and a serene enjoyment and exercise 
both of reason and of faith. 



OF COW PER. 127 

Now this whole account was for a long time un- 
known, unpublished, hidden. Some men were 
aware of its existence, but Cowper's own biogra- 
phers ignored it, and preferred to leave the sub- 
ject of his madness enveloped in a mystery that 
permitted those who hated evangelical truth and 
piety to set it down to the score of religious fanat- 
icism and bigotry. Others contradicted it, and 
refused to take the testimony of Cowper himself 
as to the character of his unregenerate life, as to 
the absolute irreligion of the whole of it, until 
there ensued the mighty change in his feelings 
and habits wrought by Divine grace. They could 
not bear to relinquish Cowper's exquisite mind 
and nature as having needed any supernatural in- 
fluence to constitute it a Christian nature, or as 
having really been the subject of that vulgar fanat- 
ical experience called conversion. They projected 
the idea of the interesting, timid, sensitive being, 
whom they had known only through his poetry, or 
the wide circle of his- admiring friends, back upon 
the period of his early life ; and they scorned the 
thought of such a want of charity as to suppose 
that such an innocent being could, in his right 
mind, have accused himself of deserving God's dis- 
pleasure. They chose still to persevere in the ac- 
customed cant of infidelity and formalism, which 
shrugged its shoulders and turned up its nose at 
the mention of experimental piety, and reasoned 



128 MISTAKES OF PRIDE. 

upon Cowper's own religious experience as part of 
his monomania or madness, exasperated if not in- 
flicted by injudicious theological advisers. 

Now this is a very general and natural delusion. 
Nevertheless, whatever of supposed piety there may 
be, whatever of unsullied purity of life, whatever 
of outward morality, whatever of seeming loveli- 
ness of character, we know that it is vain and de- 
lusive, unless the heart has been humbled before 
God and brought to the acceptance of His grace, 
as free, undeserved grace to a guilty, lost sinner. 
There is no real piety, no true sanctity of life, no 
real holiness, until God's mercy in Christ, God's 
mercy to the guilty and the lost, has been sought 
and received in God's own way, by a humble, broken 
heart and contrite spirit. But our natural pride is 
wholly averse from such a procedure and opposed 
to it. And yet that pride itself may be effectually 
concealed from one's own view, if there has not 
been a self-searching and self-knowledge of sin 
and depravity, by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, 
in the light of the spirituality of God's law. There 
have been men who seemed naturally to have all 
the humility and docility of children, learned men 
without any of the pride of learning, modest and 
unassuming, and of highest integrity and honor- 
able feeling in all the business of society and inter- 
course of life, who have, nevertheless, denied and 
rejected with indignation the necessity of self- 



MISTAKES OF PRIDE. 129 

abasement and self-loathing at the feet of the Sa- 
viour, and the truth of the worthlessness of human 
virtues without faith in His redemption, and reli- 
ance upon that alone. 

But in such' very indignation at the imputation 
of utter worthlessness to what is assumed as hu- 
man virtue ; indignation, as if the noblest qualities 
were despised, belied, and libeled ; in that very 
indignation which seems to the deluded mind but 
a noble fervor of admiration for what is admirable 
in mankind, and the defense of humanity itself 
from slander, there is the plain development of the 
sin by which the angels fell ; the pride that chal- 
lenges the regard of God himself for pretended 
human goodness, and demands the mercy of God 
on account of such goodness, and not merely on 
account of Christ. But, as Cowper remarked in 
one of his letters, mercy deserved ceases to be 
mercy, and must take the name of justice. Here, 
then, must the purest being come where Cowper 
came, here the most unsullied soul, the loveliest 
and most amiable nature, the strictest and most 
virtuous moralist, to this position at the foot of 
the cross, on a level with the most miserable pub- 
licans and harlots, or there is no piety and no sal- 
vation. Let this be understood, or nothing in the 
Gospel is understood rightly. We know nothing 

truly of Christ, or the way of salvation, till we 
6* 



130 FALSE JUD G M E"-N T S . 

know Him in the self-abasement of a contrite 
spirit. 

It might have been expected that at so late a 
period as 1836, such a biographer as Southey, with 
Cowper's own Memoir, and the whole series of his 
letters in full before him, would not have stooped 
to join in the hunt with such sneering infidelity. 
Yet we find him writing strange things in refer- 
ence both to Cowper's own religious enjoyment, 
which it is intimated was delusive, and ought not to 
have been sustained as true, and also to the influence 
of those dear Christian friends, among whom Mrs. 
Unwin and John Newton were the most intimate, 
who rejoiced with him in his religious joy. Sou- 
they argues that they ought to have discouraged 
that joy as an illusion, and that their not taking 
that course, but on the contrary confirming him 
in the belief that his happiness was the work of 
God's grace, prevented their having any power 
afterward to comfort him in gloom, and dispossess 
him of the delusions of despair. They encouraged 
him at first in what Southey intimates were false 
raptures of piety, the work of an insane mind, and 
the consequence was that they could do nothing 
with him to dissipate his darkness, when the clouds 
came upon him, or to convince him that his de- 
spair also was a false despair. Because they did 
not in the first case believe, and labor to make 
Cowper believe, that the light and grace of that 



FALSE JUDGMENTS. 131 

ecstatic blessedness which he knew when first he 
saw the Lord, were a mere illusive fancy, the heat 
of a mere delusive imagination, therefore they could 
not in the last case persuade him or encourage 
him to believe that the gloom and blackness of a 
despairing soul were of the same imaginary nature. 
The argument is, that if they had denied the 
grace and light at first to have been from heaven, 
they might have persuaded him afterward that 
the darkness and despair were only a dream from 
hell ; but that, having encouraged him in a lie at 
first, as from heaven, they could not dispossess 
him of the lie afterward, as from hell. Such, says 
Southey, " are the perilous consequences of relig- 
ious enthusiasm. He had been encouraged to 
believe that there was nothing illusive in the 
raptures of his first recovery ; and they who had 
confirmed him in that belief argued in vain against 
his illusions when they were of an opposite char- 
acter." A singularly wise physician of a mad- 
house would a writer like this have made ! One 
can not help reflecting how fearful from the outset 
must have been the result, had the care of Cowr 
per's soul fallen into the same hands with that of 
his memory. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CURE BY DIVINE GRACE. — THE MENTAL MALADY MADE SUB- 
SERVIENT, BY SUCH GRACE, TO A SWEETER POETRY. — SECRET 
OP THE ALL-RULING CHARM OP COWPER'S POETRY. 

The autobiography of the poet is a demonstra- 
tion that nothing but Divine Grace effected the 
completion and permanence of Cowper's cure, and 
that nothing but the ministrations of the Spirit of 
God preserved his mind from utter ruin. We say 
completion and permanence ; and in the best 
sense, the true, eternal sense, such was the cure. 
Cowper could say, though " I walk in the midst 
of trouble, Thou wilt revive me. The Lord will 
perfect that which concerneth nie." Those heav- 
enly ministrations, having renewed his heart, and 
sanctified the fountain of principle and feeling, 
enabled him to write with all the sweetness and 
glory of a piety kindled at the cross, even at the 
very time when, through the partial prevalence of 
his mental malady, his own personal Christian 
hope was in a state of suspended animation. For 
more reasons than one, if it had not been for Cow- 



cow fee's piety. 133 

per's piety, we should never have had his poetry. 
His sweet religious experience was a quiet harbor, 
a serene and lovely nook, into which the ship- 
wrecked mind was guided, that otherwise would, 
by the ragged reefs and waves, have been quite 
dashed in pieces. There in that undisturbed re- 
tirement he lived as a mental and spiritual Kobin- 
son Crusoe, cut off from the great world, in a 
solitude peopled mainly by his own affections. 
His mental malady indeed returned at intervals ; 
it deepened and darkened at the end of life, till 
beneath its thickest gloom he went down into the 
grave. He could say with Job, " I have made my 
bed in the darkness, and on mine eyelids is the 
shadow of death ;" and in truth no small portion 
of his life was a passage through the valley of 
that dread shadow. But his spiritual malady had 
been cured forever, and the vision of his soul had 
been purified, so that never again did he see 
through the eye of this world merely, nor ever 
again did that madness return upon him, which 
Divine inspiration hath assured us is in the hearts 
of all men naturally while they live, who live 
astray from God. 

From that madness he had been completely re- 
deemed, and to that glorious redemption he owed 
it, beyond all doubt, that the recurrence of the 
mental disease did not swallow up every thing. 
He lived in the light of heaven for many years ; 



134 CeWPER'S PIETY 

eight years may be called many in a life of such 
experience as his ; he lived that space of time at 
once, almost uninterrupted, in serene enjoyment 
of religious peace, with great delight in religious 
duties, in habits of communion with his Grod and 
Saviour, the sacredness and sweetness of which 
only his own exquisite poetry could delineate. To 
the power so gained, the habits so formed, the 
grace so long baptizing him, he owed the enjoy- 
ment and heavenly exercise of his mental facul- 
ties, even when he seemed to himself as a spectre 
shrouded in mental gloom. All that while, his sun 
was not withdrawn, but though clouds and dark- 
ness intercepted its light, so that he had little or 
no comfort and joy of its direct shining, yet his life 
went on beneath its sanctifying influence, and the 
productions of his genius grew in its holy radiance. 
A gloomy day, though not a day of sunshine, is 
still a day of smiMg7it; a day, because the sun has 
risen, and is running his appointed course ; and 
though the eye may not behold him, yet the life 
of nature plays beneath his power. 

Moreover, not only was it the regeneration 
of Cowper's heart, and his first enjoyment of the 
" peace of God that passeth all understanding," 
that preserved his mind from utter shipwreck, but 
it was Divine grace that transfigured and created 
anew his native genius. By no possibility could 
he ever, in the exercise of his native powers, had 



A FOUNTAIN OF POETRY. 135 

they not been supernaturally illuminated, have ac- 
complished what he did, not even if his mind had 
always been as serene and sane as Shakspeare's, 
though no shadow of eclipse had darkened his 
reason, nor any cloud of gloom disturbed his men- 
tal faculties. The glory of another world, not 
this, shines through his poetry, and by the in- 
spiration of a higher grace than that of native 
genius merely, his imagination was raised to be- 
hold it, or rather its glory fell upon his imagina- 
tion through the vision of his heart. 

And, in truth, it is the religion of Cowper's 
poetry that constitutes its grand all-ruling charm, 
even with the irreligious world, though many 
would not be willing to acknowledge it. The 
sweet religious influence surrounds and pervades 
it like an atmosphere. It is an atmosphere so 
serene, so sacred, so transparent, that the com- 
monest scenery is rendered beautiful and at- 
tractive by it. The same themes, the same 
thoughts, the same circumstances, would have 
been wholly different, and inferior in interest, 
had there been a different atmosphere, unirra- 
diated by the coloring of a profound spiritual ex- 
perience. Moral and economical truth itself be- 
came religious, in passing through his mind, and 
the proverbs of this world's wisdom received a 
transfiguration from the presence of higher reali- 
ties, connecting them with the spiritual world. 



13C C W P E R ' S PIETY. 

The same subjects, in the same style, and by a 
genius not inferior to Cowper's, might have been 
presented ; but, without the omnipresent charm 
of Cowper's piety, they would have been com- 
paratively unattractive. 

There is a tenderness and pensiveness arising from 
the very imperfection of that piety, that is, from 
its personal quality of despondency, which his 
poetry could not have possessed except for the pe- 
culiarity of his own experience. His subjective 
despair, like some of the stops in a great organ, 
has communicated an indefinable charm to the 
strains of his melody, without changing either the 
combination or individuality of the notes. His 
genius, under the influence of his piety, was like 
a piano with the Eolian attachment, rendering the 
whole an instrument of a vastly higher order. Men 
of the world were attracted, without knowing what 
it was that peculiarly attracted them. Even the 
philosopher Franklin, after long abjuration of 
poetry, was delighted with Cowper's first volume, 
and while he has given the reasons for his admira- 
tion, according to his philosophic judgment and 
excellent common sense, there was still the invis- 
ible, indefinable charm, which he knew not, or could 
not recognize, or name, but without which we are 
sure he would not have been so deeply moved. It 
was the tone of the soul, renewed by Divine grace, 
and so renewed, that whatever subject occupied it, 



FASCINATION OF DESPAIR. 137 

whatever wind swept over the Harp of Immortality, 
the strains "breathed forth would carry something 
of that celestial influence. 

We suppose that if an angel, concealed amid a 
throng of revelers, were to sing " Auld Lang Syne," 
there would be such a tone of heaven in the melody, 
such a deep soul of spiritual character and power 
inspiring it, and breathing from it, that the mer- 
riment would cease, and the voice of the revelers 
be hushed in solemn silence. A spell mysterious 
and irresistible would steal upon the heart, and the 
sentiment of evil would be overawed by the pre- 
sentiment of good, the present, though unknown 
and unacknowledged soul of holiness. And we 
may suppose that if one of the melodies of heaven 
could be sung by a lost spirit of the world of woe, 
concealed in human shape among the choir of a 
Christian assembly, there would be that irresistible 
character and soul of despair prevailing over the 
joy of the song, that the whole multitude of lis- 
teners might be melted into tears, or awed in a 
mysterious dread, unconscious of the cause, instead 
of yielding to the joy of an anthem of glory. The 
power of perfect and domineering character is itself 
absorbing and supreme, and combined with genius, 
or when genius creates its expression, there is the 
charm of a personal presence in every thing that 
the author writes. 



CHAPTER XI 



HOPE SUSPENDED, BUT PRIDE SUBDUED. — THE CHILD OF GOD 
WALKING IN DARKNESS. — NATURE OF THE LIGHT OF LIFE. — 
COWPER'S ENCOURAGEMENT AND ADVICE TO OTHERS. 



It may be named as another effect of Cowper's 
despondency, and of the peculiarity of God's dis- 
cipline with him, that in weaning him from the ' 
world, and making its vanities indifferent to him, 
it likewise so effectually broke his pride, and pur- 
ified his moral and mental vision from the spirit 
of self-seeking ; so that while hope as to another 
world was almost suspended, the common motives 
as to this world were suspended or inactive also, in 
a great degree ; so that truth comes to us in his 
poetry with a sincerity and artlessness, an unam- 
bitious simplicity, purity, and beauty, which is as 
the very reflection of the firmament of heaven 
thrown on us without spot or wrinkle from the 
mirror of his mind. The rays of truth and of ce- 
lestial wisdom were not, in his case, refracted by 
the ordinary medium of ambition, the thirst for 
human applause ; but came straight through his 



THE CHILD OF GOD. 139 

heart, baptized only or mainly with the heavenly 
affections, and the pervading melancholy tender- 
ness that reigned there. 

For the heavenly affections were prevalent and 
living, were quick and active, rarely reached by the 
blight, whatever it was, that blasted the blossoms 
of a personal hope. In this respect his religion was 
the most unselfish that can well be conceived of. 
There was an inner sanctuary, a holy of holies, in 
winch it lived and reigned as God's fire, for God's 
love and approbation, though a personal hope that 
he himself was interested in God's mercy seldom 
was indulged or expressed during long intervals of 
the prevalence of his disease ; and there was a pall 
of gloom let down before his spiritual vision that 
no effort could penetrate. Yet through all this 
darkness and paralysis of the hopeful part of his 
being, the sensitive and emotive part remained 
warm, affectionate, and breathing with heavenly 
life. The reef on which his hope had struck re- 
mained ; and the tide of Divine grace, though it 
flooded every other part of his nature, never rose 
high enough to set that hope at liberty. 

There were long intervals in which he could not 
even pray ; and still, with this petrifaction of his 
religious existence in that direction, as if indeed 
the finger of doom had been already laid upon it, 
there were all the lineaments of a child of God, 
all the gentleness, humility, meekness, patience, 



140 THE CHILD OF GOD 

tenderness of conscience, and gracious heavenly sen- 
sibility, that must have been traced, had the spell 
of his disease been broken, to an uninterrupted 
communion of the soul with God. It is a most 
surprising, if not quite solitary instance. It was a 
miracle of grace almost as wonderful as if the sun 
in the physical world should be blotted from the 
heavens, and yet the earth kept rolling on her axis, 
and producing her accustomed fruits in their sea- 
sons. The genealogical chain of Christian graces 
and enjoyments so strikingly set forth by Paul in 
the fifth of Komans seemed, in Cowper's case, sun- 
dered in the middle, and Hope was dropped out ; 
there was tribulation, patience, experience, but not 
hope ; and though there was undoubted proof of 
the love of God shed abroad in the heart, yet the 
sense of this blessing, the witness of the Spirit, and 
the earnest of the inheritance, seemed wholly want- 
ing. And yet there was the most humble submis- 
siveness to God's will, under this distressing, and 
sometimes tremendous dispensation. 

We have, perhaps, seen such instances ourselves, 
in men who were never poets, though sincere Chris- 
tians, and notwithstanding their gloom and dark- 
ness, eminent Christians. We have seen a child 
of God under an impression for years, of almost the 
profoundest despair, yet so kind, so sympathizing, 
so conscientious, so benevolent, that others could 
not doubt, though he himself could never believe 



WALKING IN I) A R K N E S S . 141 

that God was with him as his everlasting Saviour 
and friend. Such are extreme instances of what 
that admirable old Puritan writer, Thomas Good- 
win, considered with so much carefulness and ten- 
derness in a work given to the subject, which he 
called " The Child of God walking in Darkness." 
Such cases are certainly provided for in the Word 
of God, and may be considered as predicted in some 
measure in that very striking passage in Isaiah, 
" Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that 
obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in 
darkness and hath no light ? Let him trust in the 
name of the Lord, and stay upon his God." And 
how sympathizing, gracious, and provident is God 
in regard to all the distresses of His people, all pos- 
sible forms of their spiritual as well as temporal 
evils, in that He has not only given examples in His 
Word of just such cases, but has mercifully laid 
down rules both for the encouragement and direc- 
tion of His afflicted ones, that they may not despair 
nor ever conclude, as men are apt to do in such 
trials, that there never was or could be any such 
case before. 

Our theological philosophers, who assert that for 
a child of God truly fearing the Lord, and desiring 
in all things to please Him, there never can be 
such a thing as spiritual darkness, are. the worst of 
all comforters. The asserted rule of such uninter- 
rupted light and enjoyment is almost as bad as the 



142 THE CHILD OF GOD 

law of the Ten Commandments for life and salva- 
tion ; it strikes you dead ; and if all is sin in the 
Christian life that is not light and enjoy nient, some 
of the humblest, most contrite, most devoutly 
breathing and holy walking souls that ever lived, 
have lived long intervals in sin, even when panting 
after God as the hart panteth after the water- 
brook. Most true it is, and forever blessed be the 
Lord's name, for the assurance that he that follow- 
eth Him shall not walk in darkness, but shall have 
the light of life. But equally true it is that 
the light of life may be within the soul, and also 
upon its path, and yet the eye of the soul may be 
so holden as not to see and know a present Saviour, 
nor have the assurance of an interest in him. For 
a long, long time, this was the case in Cowper's 
experience. 

Yet, even in the midst of his own darkness, he 
could encourage others, and reason with delightful 
Christian wisdom, tenderness, and truth, on cases 
somewhat similar to his own. In a letter to New- 
ton concerning the doubts of his beloved wife as to 
her own interest in heavenly things, Cowper says, 
"None intimately acquainted with her as we 
have been, could doubt it. She doubted it, in- 
deed, herself; but though it is not our duty to 
doubt, any more than it is our privilege, I have 
always considered the self-condemning spirit, to 
which such doubts are principally owing, as one of 



WALKING IN DARKNESS. 143 

the most favorable symptoms of a nature spirit- 
ually renewed." 

Cowper would often address letters of sympathy 
and consolation to afflicted friends, as, for exam- 
ple, to Dr. Bagot, Mr. Hurdis, Hayley, and others, 
and as he never wrote what he did not feel, and 
never out of mere compliment either to the dead 
or the living, we can not but find in his references 
to the time of an anticipated happy meeting in 
a better world, a proof that amid all his personal 
despair he was still the " prisoner of hope" himself 
and kept in the bottom of his heart something 
of the encouragement he gave to others. To Dr. 
Bagot, in sympathy for a fresh and common sorrow, 
he says : " Both you and I have this comfort when 
deprived of those we love ; at our time of life, we 
have every reason to believe that the deprivation 
can not be long. Our sun is setting too, and 
when the hour of rest arrives, we shall rejoin your 
brother, and many whom we have tenderly loved, 
our forerunners into a better country." Cowper 
wrote this in a season of gloom, in 1793. 

Of another instance of spiritual distress, in which 
Cowper took a deep concern, he thus writes to Mr. 
Newton : " I have no doubt that it is distemper. 
But distresses of mind that are occasioned by dis- 
temper are the most difficult of all to deal with. 
They refuse all consolation, they will hear no rea- 
son. God only, by His own immediate impressions, 



144 . PIETY AMID GLOOM. 

can remove tlieni ; as after an experience of 
thirteen years' misery I can abundantly testify." 
This was written in the year 1787, and yet, in the 
midst of that misery he could look back, past those 
thirteen years, to a period of light and happiness, 
so radiant, so sweet, so serene, so heavenly, and so 
long-continued, that he would sometimes say, in 
reference to God's mercy in those comforts, and 
the certainty and celestial reality of them, that he 
could not be so duped, even by the arch-enemy 
himself, as to be made to question the divine na- 
ture of them. And with what affecting tenderness, 
when he left Olney, that scene of so much bliss and 
so much wretchedness, does he record his feelings ! 
" I recollected that I had once been happy there, 
and could not, without tears in mine eyes, bid adieu 
to a place in which God had so often found me. 
The human mind is a great mystery ; mine, at 
least, appeared to me to be such upon this occa- 
sion. I found that I had not only had a tender- 
ness for that ruinous abode, because it had once 
known me happy in the presence of God ; but 
that even the distress I had suffered for so long a 
time on account of His absence, had endeared it to 
me as much/' Surely this is a most striking proof 
of the depth of Cowper's piety as well as the dark- 
ness and severity of his gloom. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SICKNESS, CONVERSION, AND DEATH OP COWPER'S BROTHER 
— COWPER'S SURPRISE. AND JOY AT SUCH A MANIFESTATION OF 
GRACE. 

Let us now return to the record of his life when 
it was passing so sweetly in a retirement rilled with 
sacred duties and enjoyments. The first event that 
interrupted its quiet and happy course, was the 
death of his dear brother at Cambridge, in 1770. 
But that sickness and departure were attended by 
a manifestation of God's grace so remarkable, so 
clear, so triumphant, that the affliction was quite 
disarmed of its sting, and passed in the experience 
of Cowper rather as a bright angel of mercy than 
a cloud of trial and distress. From the first mo- 
ment of Cowper's own conversion, he had not 
ceased to interest himself with affectionate earn- 
estness in behalf of the soul of his brother, whose 
views then were any thing but evangelical, and 
who, though a man of strict morality, high intel- 
lectual accomplishments, refined taste, a most 
amiable temper, and a minister of the Church of 
1 



146 FASHIONABLE SKEPTICISM. 

England, was yet one among the many who counted 
the doctrine of regeneration by the Holy Spirit as 
a fanatical delusion. When Newton afterward 
published Cowper's deeply interesting and most 
instructive narrative of the conversion and death 
of his beloved brother, it was prefaced with some 
notice of that prevalent skepticism, under the 
power and fashion of which, an avowed attachment 
to the doctrines of the Gospel was regarded as 
a fit subject for ridicule. " The very name of vi- 
tal, experimental religion," said Newton, " excites 
contempt and scorn, and provokes resentment. 
The doctrines of regeneration by the powerful 
operation of the Holy Spirit, and the necessity of 
His continual agency and influence to advance the 
holiness and comfort of those, in whose hearts he 
has already begun a work of grace, are not only 
exploded and contradicted by many who profess a 
regard for the Bible, and by some who have sub- 
scribed to the articles and liturgy of our established 
church, but they who avow an attachment to them 
are, upon that account, and that account only, 
considered as hypocrites or visionaries, knaves or 
fools." 

Cowper's memoir of his brother was the record 
of an instance of divine grace inferior, if at all, only 
to the wondrous interposition of mercy in his own 
case. For several years Cowper's conversations 
with his brother seemed to have little effect, and 



cowper's beothee. 147 

his narrative of his own cure by the grace of Christ, 
which he gave him to peruse, seemed to be regarded 
by him rather as a proof and result of his madness. 
But when his illness came, Cowper frequently con- 
versed and prayed with him, and at length he had 
the unspeakable happiness to find that though so 
long blinded by prejudice, yet now he began to see, 
and speedily indeed, became like a little child, and 
in the reception and belief of those same truths 
which he had before rejected, he was so filled with 
happiness and peace, that Cowper's own surprise 
and joy were almost greater than he could bear. 
On the borders of the river of death they had com- 
munion on the themes of heaven, delightful, satis- 
factory, ecstatic ; and the dear object of Cowper's 
love, anxiety, and faith, passed serenely and hap- 
pily away in humble faith and prayer. 

Before he died, he told Cowper that he thought 
his own redemption from the power of sin and de- 
liverance from blindness was still more wonderful 
than his ; for his prejudices were fast confirmed 
and riveted against the truth, and he had all his 
life been a companion with those who trusted in 
themselves that they were righteous, and despised 
the doctrines of the Cross. Such was his clergy- 
man in his early days ; such were his schoolmaster 
and instructors ; such the most admired characters 
of the university ; and such was he, in the parish 
over which he was the minister. He told Cowper 



148 CONVERSION OF 

that he was just beginning to be a deist, and had 
long desired to be so ; and he owned, what he 
never confessed before, that his office, and the du- 
ties of it, were a wearisomeness to him which he 
could not bear. " Yet," said he, " wretched crea- 
ture and beast that I was, I was esteemed religious 
though I lived without God in the world." 

" Brother, if I live," said he to Cowper, " you 
and I shall be more like one another than we have 
been. But whether I live or live not, all is well, 
and shall be so ; I know it will ; I have felt that 
which I never felt before ; and am sure that God 
has visited me with this sickness to teach me what 
I was too proud to learn in health. I never had 
satisfaction till now. The doctrines I had been 
used to, referred me to myself for the foundation 
of my hopes, and there I could find nothing to rest 
upon. The sheet-anchor of the soul was wanting. 
I thought you wrong, yet wished to believe as you 
did. You suffered more than I have done before 
you believed these truths ; but our sufferings, 
though different in their kind and measure, were 
directed to the same end. I hope God has taught 
me that which He teaches none but His own. I 
hope so. These things were foolishness to me once, 
but now I have a firm foundation, and am satisfied." 

Cowper's memoir of the wondrous change in his 
brother, and of the great mercy of God in his sick- 
ness and death, is so simple, so impressive and 



cowper's brother, 149 

beautiful, that we wonder it has never been more 
widely circulated in a form by itself. It presents 
a most attractive and encouraging picture of the 
grace of the Kedeemer. One evening, when Cow- 
per went to bid him good night, he resumed the 
account of his feelings in the following words : 
" As empty, and yet full ; as having nothing, and 
yet possessing all things ; I see the rock upon 
which I once split, and I see the rock of my sal- 
vation I have learned that in a moment 

which I could not have learned by reading many 
books for many years. I have often studied these 
points, and studied them with great attention, but 
was blinded by prejudice ; and unless He who alone 
is worthy to unloose the seals, had opened the book 
to me, I had been blinded still. Now they appear 
so plain, that though I am convinced no comment 
could have ever made me understand them, I won- 
dered I did not see them before." 

Another evening he said, " I see now who was 

right and who was mistaken What a scene 

is passing before me ! Ideas upon these subjects 
crowd upon me faster than I can give them utter- 
ance. How plain do many texts appear, to which, 
after consulting all the commentators, I could 
hardly affix a meaning ; and now I have their 
true meaning without any comment at all. There 
is but one key to the New Testament, but one In- 
terpreter. I can not describe to you, nor shall ever 



150 CONVERSION OF 

be able to describe, what I felt in the moment 
when it was given to me. May I make a good use 
of it ! How I shudder when I think of the danger 
I have just escaped ! I had made up my mind 
upon these subjects, and was determined to hazard 
all upon the justness of my own opinions." 

He had once read the memoirs of Janeway at 
Cowper's desire, and he now told Cowper that he 
had laughed at it in his own mind, and accounted 
it mere madness and folly. Cowper's own narra- 
tive of himself he had also ascribed to the unset- 
tled condition of his intellect, but now he consid- 
ered his own redemption from such ignorance, 
darkness and guilt to be more wonderful than 
even Cowper's. One afternoon, while Cowper was 
writing by the fire-side, he thus addressed himself 
to the nurse, who sat at the head of his bed : 
" Nurse, I have lived three and thirty years, and I 
will tell you how I have spent them. When I was 
a boy, they taught me Latin ; and because I was 
the son of a gentleman, they taught me Greek. 
These I learned under a sort of private tutor. At 
the age of fourteen, or thereabouts, they sent me 
to a public school, where I learned more Latin 
and Greek, and last of all to this place, where I 
have been learning more Latin and Greek still. 
Now has not this been a blessed life, and much to 
the glory of God ?" He was much distressed at 
the thought of having been for ten years an or- 



cowper's brother. 151 

dained minister, but a blind leader of the blind ; 
intrusted with the care of souls, yet unable to 
teach them, because he knew not the Lord him- 
self. He desired and hoped to recover, that he 
might yet be faithful, and be an instrument of 
good to others. He said to his brother, " Brother, 
I was going to say I was born in such a year ; but 
I correct myself; I would rather say, in such a 
year I came into the world. You know when I 
was born." 

The loss of a brother so inexpressibly dear, at 
the very moment when he had begun to live, and 
could fully sympathize with Cowper in all his 
Christian feelings, would have been an overwhelm- 
ing sorrow, but for the greatness of the grace at- 
tending it. The deep extraordinary experience 
of Divine mercy in so peaceful and happy a death, 
confirmed Cowper in his own faith and hope, and 
prevented the disastrous effect which so grea,t an 
affliction might otherwise have had upon his men- 
tal frame and nervous system. He continued the 
performance and enjoyment of his spiritual duties, 
and went on in the composition of the " Olney 
Hymns/' His letters had long breathed a sweet 
spirit of piety and of affectionate solicitude for 
others, that they might enjoy the same heavenly 
hope with himself. And yet at this very time 
the period was near when the dreadful malady 
which had carried him to the insane asylum at 



152 CONVERSION OF 

St. Albans, would again seize upon his being, and 
mind and heart would be involved for a season in 
the blackness of darkness. 

And here we note that if it had not been for the 
rich and sweet experience of God's loving-kindness 
in these years of light and peace, that in Hunting- 
don and Olney, in the Christian society of the Un- 
wins and of Newton, had passed so pleasantly, the 
dread incursion of his madness would utterly have 
overwhelmed him, and he must have passed into 
absolute incurable despair. But during those years 
of such heavenly Christian enjoyment and frequently 
unclouded light, God was preparing him for a long 
and dreary conflict, and at the same time providing 
for the exercise and development of his genius. In 
those years, more than in all the rest of his life, he 
gained that rich spiritual wisdom, that experi- 
mental knowledge of divine truth, that acquaint- 
ance with the human heart, as touched by divine 
grace, that affectionate sympathy with and knowl- 
edge of the woes of other hearts, and that habit of 
submissive acquiescence with the will of God, which 
prepared him to write such a poem as " The Task/' 

Yet Southey dares to intimate — concerning the 
Christian experience of Cowper in these delightful 
years, and especially the happiness of his first re- 
covery — that it was merely the illusion of his mad- 
ness which ought to have been discouraged. He 
sets it down (as we have seen) as a perilous relig- 



cowper's brother. 153 

ious enthusiasm, and rebukes the religious friends 
of Cowper for confirming him in the belief that 
there was any thing supernatural in his cure. But 
certainly it would have been strange comfort, and 
as dangerous as strange, to tell the victim of relig- 
ious despair, in the first happiness of a sight of 
the Redeemer, and the first enjoyment of a serene 
hope, that the happiness and the hope were both il- 
lusive, and that the raptures of a recovery, if deemed 
real, would only be productive of the perilous con- 
sequences of religious enthusiasm. In this and 
some other passages, Southey goes far toward the 
hazardous intimation that Cowper's religious expe- 
rience, instead of being the work of the Spirit of 
God, was only another form of his insanity, or the 
confounding of bodily sensations with spiritual im- 
pressions. 

Now, if Southey could study such a manifesta- 
tion oV grace and truth in Christ Jesus as that 
revealed and recorded in the lives of such men as 
Newton and Cowper, and we may add, the Ger- 
man convert Van Lier (whose account of his own 
Christian experience Cowper translated from the 
Latin), and yet deliberately sneer at such ex- 
perience, calling it the " Torrid Zone/' and main- 
taining a mind and heart all the way blinded to 
the interpositions of grace, divine and supernatural, 
it is one of the most extraordinary cases of un- 
belief and darkness ever known. If Southey's 



154 CO.VYERSIOX OF 

mind, while rational, was in that state of skepti- 
cism, his madness was infinitely worse than Cow- 
per's. We know not what to make of the tone, 
half devout, half sneering, that marks a portion 
of the life of the Christian poet. But Sou they 
had also called the experience of Bunyan himself, 
in one stage of it, a burning and feverish en- 
thusiasm. He seems to have prided himself in 
the assumption of a much better understanding of 
Cowper's malady, than Newton and Mrs. Unwin, 
Cowper's dearest friends and guardians, possessed ; 
but of its cure, as divine and supernatural, he 
seems to have believed or understood little or 
nothing. He appears like a Rationalistic theolo 
gian, or JSTeologian, writing commentaries on an 
experimental process of grace, of which he does 
not credit the existence. 

Yet, in the purest and serenest light, both of 
reason and of faith, Cowper himself was so fully 
persuaded that his recovery at St. Alban's, and his 
happiness afterward, had come from God and his 
grace ; he knew this, with such perfect assurance, 
by the Spirit of God bearing witness with his own 
spirit ; that even in a subsequent access of his 
malady, and under the depths of what seemed the 
darkness of absolute despair, he declared that it 
was not in the power of the arch-enemy himself 
to deprive him of that conviction. At a late 
period of his life, Cowper made, in one of his let- 



cowper's brother. 155 



ters, a striking remark, which he little knew was 
to become applicable (with what force and beauty!) 
to some of his own biographers. " The quarrel 
that the world has," said he, " with evangelic men 
and doctrines, they would have with a host of 
angels in the human form. For it is the quarrel 
of owls with sunshine ; of ignorance with divine 
illumination." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



RECURRENCE OF COWPER'S MALADY. — ITS CONTINUANCE FOR SEYEN 
YEARS. — HIS GRADUAL RETURN TO LITERARY EFFORT, AND HIS 
ENJOYMENT IN THE COMPOSITION OF HIS POETRY. 



The threatened access of his malady came 
with great suddenness in the month of January, 
1773. A dim mysterious presentiment of it took 
possession of his soul in one of his solitary field- 
walks in the country, and he returned home and 
composed the last of the hymns contributed hy 
him to the Olney Collection, and one of the most 
exquisitely beautiful and instructive among them 
all, " God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders 
to perform." ■ That holy and admirable composi- 
tion was the only effort of his genius for nearly 
seven years, during which period, or the greater 
part of it, he was in the profoundest dejection of 
spirits, and sometimes in a state amounting to 
paroxyms of despair. Some years afterward, in a 
letter to Lady Hesketh, he described his condition 
under that attack, as follows : 

" In the year 1773 the same scene that was 






cowper's malady. 157 

acted at St. Alban's opened upon me again at 
Olney, only covered with a still deeper shade of 
melancholy, and ordained to be of much longer 
duration. I was suddenly reduced from my 
wonted state of understanding to an almost child- 
ish imbecility. I did not, indeed, lose my senses, 
but I lost the power to exercise them. I could 
return a rational answer, even to a difficult ques- 
tion ; but a question was necessary, or I never 
spoke at all. This state of mind was accom- 
panied, as I suppose it to be in most instances 
of the kind, with misapprehensions of things and 
persons that made me a very untractable patient. 
I believed that every body hated me, and that 
Mrs. Unwin hated me worst of all ; was convinced 
that all my food was poisoned, together with ten 
thousand meagrims of the same stamp. Dr. 
Cotton was consulted. He replied that he could 
do no more for me than might be done at Olney, 
but recommended particular vigilance lest I should 
attempt my life, a caution for which there was 
the greatest occasion. At the same time that I 
was convinced of Mrs. Unwinds aversion to me, I 
could endure no other companion. The whole 
management of me consequently devolved upon 
her, and a terrible task she had. She performed 
it, however, with a cheerfulness hardly ever 
equaled on such an occasion, and I have often 
heard her say that if she ever praised God in her 



158 cowpek's malady. 

life, it was when she found that she was to have 
all the labor." 

This second attack of his malady, though sud- 
den and severe, was lighter than the first ; but it 
continued much longer, and only by slow degrees 
did his mind regain its wonted strength and play- 
fulness. It is not till near 1780 that his letters 
become frequent and full, and from that time ever 
after, though often exquisitely sportive and hu- 
morous, there was a tone of pensiveness, and often 
of the deepest melancholy in them ; nor did he 
ever again in life enjoy, at any interval, the serene 
unclouded blissfulness of his first religious ex- 
perience, but his path was always more or less in 
the valley of the shadow of death. When he 
began to recover, it was by gradual amusement 
and occupation, such as playing with his tame 
hares, gardening, building houses for his plants, 
and drawing, in which things he engaged as with 
the affectionate and playful spirit of a child ; it 
was thus only that his mind resumed its active 
habits, and at length could come to the effort of 
literary composition. He wrote verses now and 
then for amusement, but compared his mind, in 
one of his letters to Mr. Newton, to a board under 
the plane of the carpenter, the shavings being his 
uppermost thoughts, nor likely to be ever any thing 
but shavings, though planed as thin as a wafer. 
" I can not bear much thinking," said he. " The 



IMPRESSIVE REMARK. 159 

meshes of that fine net-work, the brain, are com- 
posed of such mere spinner's threads in me, that 
when a long thought finds its way into them, it 
buzzes, and twangs, and bustles about at such a 
rate, as seems to threaten the whole contexture." 

During this picture of gloom and gradual con- 
valescence, Mr. Newton, Mrs. Unwin, and his play- 
ful tame hares, were for years his only companions. 
In 1780, when his mind had fully recovered its 
strength, and the dejection of his spirits was in 
some degree lightened, Mr. Newton was called 
from Olney to a parish in London ; and thence- 
forward their intercourse was continued in an 
affectionate and deeply, often intensely and pain- 
fully interesting correspondence ; for to Newton 
Cowper opened his heart more freely and fully, in 
regard to his spiritual distress and gloom, than to 
any other human being. Nevertheless, some of 
the most exquisitely playful and humorous letters 
he ever wrote were written to Newton, though 
ordinarily, with him, the wonted themes of con- 
versation would very naturally be of a graver cast 
than with many of his other correspondents. In 
one of his earliest letters to Newton he makes the 
following most impressive remark in regard to his 
own experience, as teaching him the vanity of 
earthly pursuits and pleasures : "If every human 
being upon earth could think for one quarter of an 
hour as I have done for many years, there might, 



160 THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT. 

perhaps, be many miserable men among them, but 
not an unawakened one would be found from the 
arctic to the antarctic circle." This is exceed- 
ingly striking. It is like opening a door in the 
side of a dark mountain, where secret and awful 
procedures of nature are going on, and bidding you 
look in. 

He continues, describing the chastened Chris- 
tian spirit in which his sorrows had taught him to 
pursue the harmless occupations and amusements 
with which he was beguiling his mind into em- 
ployment, " I could spend whole days and moon- 
light nights in feeding upon a lovely prospect. My 
eyes drink the rivers as they flow. I delight in 
baubles, and know them to be such ; for, viewed 
without a reference to their Author, what is the 
earth, what are the planets, what is the sun itself, 
but a bauble ? Better for a man never to have 
seen them, or to see them with the eyes of a brute, 
stupid and unconscious of what he beholds, than 
not to be able to say, ' The Maker of all these won- 
ders is my friend/ The eyes of many have never 
been opened to see that they are trifles ; mine have 
been, and will be till they are closed forever. They 
think a fine estate, a large conservatory hot-house, 
rich as a West Indian garden, things of conse- 
quence, visit them with pleasure, and muse upon 
them with ten times more. I am pleased with a 
frame of four lights, doubtful whether the few 



cowper's playthings. 161 

pines it contains will ever be worth a farthing ; 
amuse myself with a green-house, which Lord 
Bute's gardener could take upon his back and 
w T alk away with it ; and when I have paid it the 
accustomed visit, and watered it, and given it air, 
I say to myself — this is not mine ; 'tis a plaything 
lent me for the present ; I must leave it soon." 

In another letter to Mr. Unwin, at the same 
time, Cowper speaks of the delight with which just 
then he was absorbed in the passion for landscape- 
drawings ; and he describes a characteristic of his 
mind and heart, intimately connected, no doubt, 
with his success as a poet. " So long as I am 
pleased with an employment," says he, " I am ca- 
pable of unwearied application, because my feelings 
are all of the intense kind ; I never received a little 
pleasure from any thing in my life ; if I am de- 
lighted, it is in the extreme." Keeping this char- 
acteristic in view, it is impossible not to reflect, 
with great satisfaction, on the pleasure Cowper 
must have enjoyed even in the midst of saddest 
dejection, almost descending to despair, in the 
composition of his poetry. We are reminded of 
the experience of Bunyan, which in many points 
had so much that was similar to Cowper's. For 
some years Bunyan was under such a load of the 
sense of guilt and condemnation, that he describes 
himself almost as one coming from hell into the 
pulpit ; he says he went in chains to preach to men 



162 cowpee's playthings. 

in chains ; but it was marvelous that almost al- 
ways, while this experience lasted, the burden was 
taken off the moment he began to speak, and he 
could preach with a divine freedom and enjoyment, 
though as soon as he got through, it all came back 
again, even at the pulpit stairs. 

Something such was Cowper's experience in the 
composition of his poems. The exercise of compo- 
sition, while he was engaged in it, carried him 
above the gloom and dejection of his soul, into 
clear skies. It was like climbing up a mountain 
out of a sea of mist, into a serene and cloudless 
atmosphere, to describe and enjoy the glory, and 
then return again. Cowper often declared that 
the same dejection of soul which would have kept 
another man from ever becoming a poet, made him 
one. Moreover, it is clear that during these appa- 
rently useless and hopeless years, in which by turns 
he was playing the gardener, carpenter, hare-tamer, 
and twenty other things, in almost childlike amuse- 
ment, he was gathering materials from nature, as 
well as unconscious quiet meditation, for his future 
works. 

Meantime, his letters were often little poems, 
sometimes inimitably and exquisitely droll ; and 
in the very midst of them, as often as a thought 
seized him for the purpose, or a subject fit for 
rhyme, he would throw it at once into verse, and 
thus produced some of the most beautiful of his 



MINOR POEMS. 163 

minor pieces. " I am glad/' said he, in reference 
to such efforts, " when I can find a subject to work 
upon ; — a lapidary, I suppose, accounts it a labor- 
ious part of his business to rub away the roughness 
of the stone ; but it is my amusement ; and if, 
after all the polishing I can give if, it discovers 
some little lustre, I think myself well rewarded for 
my pains." These were what he called the shav- 
ings of his mind ; and sometimes, when the humor 
took him, he would in the midst of a letter open 
his pocket-book, and find something to transcribe 
that had been sketched down, but not finished, at a 
previous period. " The Nightingale and Glow- 
worm," "The Goldfinch/' "The Kaven," "The 
Pine-apple and the Bee," " The Case between Eyes 
and Nose," " The Doves," and a great many other 
pieces were composed in this playful, delightful, 
spontaneous way ; and after ministering to his 
own amusement, were sent off for the gratification 
of others. 

Sometimes he would sit down and scribble a let- 
ter to Newton in the form of prose, but in the real- 
ity of rhyme, apparently without the least effort, 
and from the mere spontaneous overflow of a play- 
ful mind in the habit of versification. Southey 
has somewhere most unwarrantably intimated that 
Cowper, in his correspondence with Newton, pur- 
sued it as a task, and like a man going to the con- 
fessional. The assertion is quite unfounded, for 



164 MINOR POEMS. 

some of the most sportive in the whole collection 
of his epistles are those addressed to this dear 
friend and to Mrs. Newton. And although his 
friendship with Mr. Unwin was formed some years 
the earliest, yet neither Mr. Unwin, nor any other 
friend on earth, ever knew so much of Cowper' s 
spiritual conflicts and distresses as Newton, nor 
did ever any other being sympathize so deeply and 
intelligently with him, in the endurance of such 
tremendous gloom. And Newton's letters to Cow- 
per must have been full of affectionate encourage- 
ment, instruction, and support, and because mainly 
occupied with the subject of religion, therefore the 
more acceptable, although Southey complains that 
Newton sermonized in his epistles, and that there- 
fore " they were not such as Cowper could have 
had any pleasure in receiving." If the sermonizing 
was such as is contained in the " Cardiphonia," 
Cowper would have delighted in it, and beyond 
question was greatly benefited and comforted. But 
none of the letters which Cowper ever received 
from any of his correspondents could be compared 
with his own for the perfection of all the graces 
that combine to render them instructive and 
charming. No man that ever wrote English could 
write letters so beautifully as Cowper. 

One of his biographers has said, though along 
with much praise of the superior excellence of Cow- 
per's letters above all others, that they are not dis- 



MINOR POEMS. 165 

tinguished for superiority of thought or diction ; — 
a most unfortunate criticism, since they are distin- 
guished for these very qualities, above all other 
epistolary collections in the language. The dic- 
tion with its ornaments is as pure and sweet, as 
artless and simple, as natural and idiomatic as a 
field of fresh grass intermingled with strawberry 
blossoms or set with daisies, the most unassuming 
and yet the loveliest of flowers for such a combi- 
nation. And the thought is often so profound, 
that if it were not for the charming simplicity and 
artlessness of the style and language, the mind 
would be arrested in admiration of its originality 
and power. The reader is absolutely deceived by 
that simplicity into the impression that such 
thought is as easy as the language ; and, indeed, 
such a style both of thought and language marks 
the highest genius, and while it seems easy, is 
proved difficult by its very rareness in English lit- 
erature. The study of Cowper's prose as well as 
his poetry would be one of the best disciplinary 
processes for the acquisition of a habit of ease and 
purity, and at the same time strength and point, 
in the use of the English tongue. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

COMPOSITION OF THE "PROGRESS OF ERROR," " TABLE TALK," "RE- 
TIREMENT/' AND OTHER PIECES. — PUBLICATION OF HIS FIRST 
VOLUME. — SECRET OF ITS ATTRACTIVENESS OF THOUGHT AND 
STYLE. — BEAUTY OF COWPER'S LETTERS. 

It was thus that by degrees, step after step, 
Cowper was led to the composition of the poem 
entitled " The Progress of Error/' which he an- 
nounced in a letter to Newton, with the following 
remarks, in the month of December: "At this 
season of the year, and in this gloomy uncomfort- 
able climate, it is no easy matter for the owner of 
a mind like mine to divert it from sad subjects, 
and fix it upon such as may administer to its 
amusement. Poetry, above all things, is useful to 
me in this respect. While I am held in pursuit 
of pretty images, or a pretty way of expressing 
them, I forget every thing that is irksome, and, 
like a boy that plays truant, determine to avail 
myself of the present opportunity to be amused, 
and to put by the disagreeable recollection that I 
must, after all, go home and be whipped again." 



TABLE TALK. 167 

Id this way it was that he finished his " Table 
Talk," which in 1781 he sent to Mr. Newton, with 
a characteristic letter, in which he described his 
difficult dilemma between weeping and laughing, 
and said he was merry to decoy people into his 
company, and grave that they might be the better 
for it. But he was inclined to susjDect that if his 
Muse were to go forth clad in Quaker color, with- 
out a bit of ribbon to enliven her appearance, she 
might walk from one end of London to the other, 
as little noticed as if she were one of the sisterhood 
indeed. A few days afterward he announced to 
Newton the poem of "Expostulation;" and a 
week or two after that, asked his advice and help 
by way of a preface, in the publication of a vol- 
ume. When he first made the collection of pieces 
of which it was composed, he had not the smallest 
expectation of publishing. 

He told his friend Hill that the volume was 
principally produced in the winter, when he could 
not be employed out of doors. " When I can find 
no other occupation," said he, " I think ; and when 
I think, I am very apt to do it in rhyme. Hence 
it comes to pass that the season of the year which 
generally pinches off the flowers of poetry, unfolds 
mine, such as they are, and crowns me with a win- 
ter garland. In this respect, therefore, I and my 
cotemporary bards are by no means upon a par. 
They write when the delightful influences of fine 



168 



COWPER S FIRST VOLUME, 






weather, fine prospects, and a brisk motion of the 
animal spirits make poetry almost the language of 
nature ; and I, when icicles depend from all the 
leaves of the Parnassian laurel, and when a reason- 
able man would as little expect to succeed in verse 
as to hear a black-bird whistle." 

The volume, thus prepared, was published in 
1782, when Cowper was fifty years of age. It was 
the first-fruits of his sorrows, his piety, his genius, 
of which his compositions among the " Olney 
Hymns," not then given to the public, had been 
the earnest and the promise. It consisted of eight 
separate poems, the first of which was " Table 
Talk," and the last " Eetirement ;" all of a char- 
acter so harmonious, and in the same meter, 
melody, and style, that the collection possessed a 
unity almost as perfect as " The Task " This ad- 
mirable volume was the opening of a new and 
original vein in English poetical literature ; but 
with all its excellences, though it found many 
admirers, was by no means immediately popular. 
The volume grew by delay of publication, no small 
portion of it having been composed and added 
while the first part was in the press. This was the 
case with the poems of"" Hope," " Conversation," 
and the whole of the last piece, entitled " Eetire- 
ment." The whole of the volume was " finished, 
polished, touched, and retouched, with the utmost 
care." This is Cowper's own declaration respecting 



newton's preface. 169 

it. He occupied more time and spent more labor 
on the revisal of his compositions than on the first 
creation of them. 

The volume was to have been published with a 
preface by Newton, which had been prepared at 
Cowper's request, and was sent to Johnson, Cow- 
per's publisher. It always appears now, printed 
with the poems, as published February 18, 1782, 
and signed John Newton. Yet, so low was the 
state of religion in England at that time, so fash- 
ionable was it, even in the English Church, to hate, 
revile, and despise experimental piety as Method- 
ism, and so fearful was the publisher of injuring 
the sale of the volume, that in compliance with his 
wishes the affectionate, judicious, and admirable 
preface by Cowper's dear and valued friend was 
suppressed, and the volume was published without 
it. Cowper left the whole thing to be settled be- 
tween Johnson and Newton ; but it would have 
been a wiser and more dignified course if he had 
insisted on the preface appearing with the book. 
It was thought too pious, and he suffered Johnson, 
the publisher, to have his own way, though he 
wrote Newton that the times must have altered 
for the worse, and the world must have grown 
even more foolish and careless than it was when he 
had the honor of knowing it, if such a preface as 
his friend's could spoil the market of the volume. 
It was in this preface that Newton spoke of Cow- 



170 newton's preface. 

per as the friend whose presence at Olney was 
" one of the principal blessings of his life ; a friend 
and counselor in whose company for almost seven 
years, though they were seldom seven successive 
waking hours separated, he always found new 
pleasure." 

On the occasion of composing this volume, Cow- 
per told his friend Mr. Unwin that there were 
times when he was no more a poet than a mathe- 
matician, and when such a season occurred, he al- 
ways thought it better to give up the point than 
to labor in vain. Sometimes he could write fifty 
lines a day, sometimes not five. After he had dis- 
continued the practice of verse-making for some 
weeks, he felt quite incapable of resuming it, and 
wondered at it, as one of the most extraordinary 
incidents of his life, that he should have composed 
a volume. In better days, or what might have 
seemed better, he would not have dared to commit 
his name and reputation to the hazard of public 
opinion. But the discipline through which God 
had caused him to j>ass, made what once he re- 
garded as important to appear trivial, and he 
found he could go forward in his work unfettered 
by fear, and under no restraint from his natural 
diffidence. 

He told Mr. Unwin that what he reckoned 
among his principal advantages as a writer of 
verse was this, that up to that time, in 1781, he 






SECRET OF ORIGINALITY. 171 

had not read a single English poem for thirteen 
years, and but one for twenty. But this was not 
the cause of his originality, which is quite another 
quality than the bare absence of imitation ; and 
he was in some respects the most truly original 
poet that had appeared for a century. When his 
first volume was about to be published, he was not 
a little fearful of the opinion of Dr. Johnson, and 
he told Newton that one of Johnson's pointed sar- 
casms, if he should happen to be displeased, would 
soon find its way into all companies, and spoil the 
sale. This is an interesting illustration of the 
despotic power over literary opinion so long wielded 
by Johnson, and carried much wider by his great 
conversational powers than by his written criti- 
cisms. 

The secret of Cowper's attractiveness of thought 
and style, whatever he handled, and of the sweet 
air of nature breathing in every page, but especially 
in his rural descriptions, is disclosed in his letters. 
Whatever he did, he did with his whole heart. 
When he told his beloved cousin, Lady Hesketh, 
that he never received a little pleasure from any 
thing, he might have added, that things which to 
others might have seemed little, and would have 
occasioned no thought at all, were to him the min- 
isters sometimes of profound and pensive thought, 
sometimes of exquisite pleasure. The charm of 
unaffected religious sentiment and feeling, diffused 






172 SECRET OF ORIGINALITY. 

as an atmosphere belonging to the scenery, and 
the scenery to it, as idiomatic and native as the 
air of an Italian sunset to the bay of Naples, was 
a new thing in poetry. Here was Biblical truth, 
Puritan truth, as plain and pungent as any of 
Latimer's sermons, and all the feeling of a poet's 
heart, and all the reality and fire of a poet's genius 
along with it ; unpalatable and most condemning 
satire, and yet the earnestness, the humor, and the 
love that made it winning ; and in all the pictures 
of rural life and landscape, the same elements, the 
sweet religious sensibility, the quick and interest- 
ing discernment, the quiet truth to nature, and a 
heart full of the enjoyment of it. Nothing was 
admitted from art or imitation, nothing added at 
second hand, nothing but what he himself drew 
from reality. 

We find the poet in one of his letters persuading 
his friend Unwin to take more air and exercise in 
order to prevent dejection and melancholy, and 
telling him that easy-chairs and sedentary habits 
were no friends to cheerfulness. If his friend ob- 
jected that his exercise would do him no good 
without an object, he answered, " Is not a new 
prospect, which in most countries is gained at the 
end of every mile, an object ? Every thing I see 
in the fields is to me an object ; and I can look at 
the same rivulet, or at a handsome tree, every day 
of my life with new pleasure. This, indeed, is 



SECRET OF ORIGINALITY. 173 



partly the effect of a natural taste for rural beauty, 
and partly the effect of habit, for I never in all my 
life have let slip the opportunity of breathing fresh 
air, and conversing with nature, when I could fairly 
catch it. I earnestly recommend a cultivation of 
the same taste to you." 

This delightful trait in the life and power of 
Cowper's character and genius reminds us forc- 
ibly of Coleridge's remarks in the fifteenth Essay 
in the " Friend," which he might himself have 
written immediately after the perusal of Cowper's 
letter. " To find no contradiction in the union of 
old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of Days 
with feelings as fresh as if they then sprang forth 
at his own flat — this characterizes the minds 
that feel the riddle of the world, and may help to 
unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood 
into the powers of manhood, to combine the 
child's sense of wonder and novelty with the ap- 
pearances which every day for perhaps forty years 
has rendered familiar : 



With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, 
And man and woman ; — 

this is the character and privilege of genius, and 
one of the marks which distinguish genius from 
talent. And so to represent familiar objects as to 
awaken the minds of others to a like freshness 
of sensation concerning them — this is the prime 



174 LORD THURLOW, 

merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode 
of manifestation." 

Cowper told his friend that he never knew, be- 
fore he mounted his Parnassian steed, at what 
rate he might choose to travel. If he was indis- 
posed to haste, it was impossible to accelerate his 
pace ; if otherwise, equally impossible to stop 
him. This he said, even while composing the 
" Tirocinium ;" and he added, " The critics will 
never know that four lines of it were composed 
while I had an ounce and a half of ipecacuanha 
upon my stomach, and a wooden vessel called a 
pail between my knees ; and that in the very 
article — in short, that I was delivered of the emetic 
and the verses in the same moment/' He thought 
that was a proof of singular industry, and though 
it was not uncommon for poets to obtain great 
help from cathartics in the article of brilliancy, it 
was a new and original discovery to find that an 
emetic was a sovereign remedy for costiveness, and 
would be sure to produce a fluent and easy versifi- 
cation. 

When Cowper's first volume was published, he 
sent it to his old school-fellows Colman and Lord 
Chancellor Thurlow. They neither of them paid 
the slightest attention either to the poem or its 
author, not having the common civility even to 
acknowledge the gift. This neglect was more 
than made up to Cowper, in the letter of sincere and 



LORD THURLOW. 175 

characteristic applause which he received from Dr. 
Franklin ; but for a season the rudeness of his old 
friends was the source of some justly indignant 
feelings in his bosom. From the Lord Chancellor 
the unkindness was the greater, because Cowper 
addressed to him, along with the volume, a letter 
referring to their early and cordial friendship, and 
entreating his lordship's pardon for the poem of 
which he was the subject. " The best excuse I 
can make/' said Cowper, " is, that it flowed almost 
spontaneously from the affectionate remembrance 
of a connection that did me so much honor." 
Thurlow returned not the least acknowledgment 
or notice of this mark of continued regard on the 
part of a long intimate friend, and Cowper ex- 
pressed his indignation in a poem sent to his dear 
friend Mr. Unwin : 

Farewell, false hearts ! whose best affections fail, 
Like shallow brooks, which summer suns exhale I 

" He has great abilities," said Cowper in a letter 
to Mr. Unwin, " but no religion." And in a letter 
in regard to the volume of poetry, and the re- 
ligious instruction it was intended to convey : " I 
have sent him the truth, and the truth which I 
know he is ignorant of." When this letter was 
published by Hayley, this pointed declaration, 
which might possibly have awakened some salu- 
tary anxiety, was omitted for fear of giving offense. 



176 LORD THURLOW, 

because Thurlow was still living ! The descrip- 
tion of character in the poem was also suppressed, 
but the following beautiful conclusion was printed, 
containing a picture, drawn from life, of Cowper's 
happiness in the treasures of friendship God had 
given him : 



Votaries of business and of pleasure prove 
Faithless alike in friendship and in love ; 
Retired from all the circles of the gay, 
And all the crowds that bustle life away, 
To scenes where competition, envy, strife, 
Beget no thunder-clouds to trouble life. 
Let me the charge of some good angel find, 
One who has known and has escaped mankind, 
Polite, yet virtuous, who has brought away 
The manners, not the morals, of the day. 
With him, perhaps with her (for men have known 
No firmer friendships than the fair have shown), 
Let me enjoy, in some unthought of spot, 
All former friends forgiven and forgot, 
Down to the close of life's fast fading scene, 
Union of hearts, without a flaw between ; 
'Tis grace, 'tis bounty, and it calls for praise, 
If God give health, that sunshine of our days; 
And if He add, a blessing shared by few, 
Content of heart, more praises still are due. 
But if He grant a friend, that boon possesst 
Indeed is treasure, and crowns all the rest. 
And giving one whose heart is in the skies, 
Born from above, and made divinely wise, 
He gives what bankrupt Nature never can, 
Whose noblest coin is light and brittle man, 
Gold, purer far than Ophir ever knew, 
A soul, an image of Himself, and therefore true. 



CHAPTER XV. 

POWER OF COWPER'S SATIRE. — ITS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER AND 
PURPOSE. — POWER AND BEAUTY OF THOUGHT IN THE POEM OF 
"TRUTH." — SUBLIMITY OF "THE EXPOSTULATION." — COWPER'S 
ABHORRENCE OF SLAVERY. 

For every one of the subjects in this volume, 
Cowper had been richly prepared both by his spir- 
itual discipline and his education in the schools and 
in society. . The power of vigorous and caustic sat- 
ire was never more admirably combined with af- 
fectionate feeling, an enlarged and comprehensive 
sympathy, generous and kindly wit and humor, a 
fervent love of the truth, and hatred of all hypoc- 
risy. With his native amiable disposition and 
unaffected Christian charity, it was impossible for 
Cowper to-be bitter against any thing but mean- 
ness, malignity, profane bigotry, and proud and 
fashionable sin. One would hardly have expected 
from this retired and shy observer, in that deep 
seclusion from which he looked forth through the 
loop-holes of his retreat, upon the Babel of this 
world, so keen a discernment and so graphic and 

faithful a portraiture of its manners and its life, its 
8* 



178 



cowper's satire. 






follies and its woes. The keenness of Cowper's 
satire is not bitterness, not acrimony, but truth, 
and the just severity of Christian truth and love 
against obstinate error, iniquity, pretension and 
pride. Here is the burning and unsparing pun- 
gency of Juvenal, along with a genial, gentle play- 
fulness and Christian tenderness, of which the 
Kornan satirist knew nothing. Cowper's satire is 
spontaneous, not artificial, not the ambition of 
severity, but as natural and playful as the humor 
in "John Gilpin ;" and therefore it is at once the 
most telling and effective, and at the same time 
the most interesting and attractive in the lan- 
guage. It is exceedingly seldom that satire so 
powerful is so penetrated with the spirit of good- 
nature and of love ; and that a native faculty, so 
fitted and disposed for shrewd and biting notice 
and remark, is found so imbued with grace and 
gentleness. 

But Cowper could pour out his whole soul in 
sacred invective and indignant rebuke of all forms 
of sacrilege and impiety, and could impress, in 
verse all compact with thought and earnestness, 
the sanctifying and beloved themes of the Gospel 
that inspired his heart. There was neither hesita- 
tion nor shrinking here, no disguise nor mitigation, 
no qualifying nor softening of the truth ; but with 
the utmost plainness and point it was applied to 
the heart and conscience. With a dignity and 



PUNGENCY OF TRUTH. 179 

power above all mere rhetoric, with a simplicity 
and terseness of speech that did not admit the 
possibility of being misunderstood, he presented, 
in his poem on " Truth," the much-abused and 
derided doctrine of justification by faith in an 
atoning Saviour. With what unexpected power 
and pungency, and, at the same time, beauty, does 
that admirable poem open : 

Man, on the dubious waves of error tossed, 
His ship half foundered, and his compass lost, 
Sees, far as human optics may command, 
A sleeping fog, and fancies it dry land ; 
Spreads all his canvas, every sinew plies ; 
Pants for it, aims at it, enters it, and dies ! 
Then farewell all self-satisfying schemes, 
His well-built systems, philosophic dreams; 
Deceitful views of future bliss, farewell! 
He reads his sentence at the flames of hell 
Hard lot of man — to toil for the reward 
Of virtue, and yet lose it ! Wherefore hard ? 
He that would win the race must guide his horse 
Obedient to the customs of the course ; 
Else, though unequaled to the goal he flies, 
A meaner than himself shall gain the prize. 
Grace leads the right way : if you choose the wrong, 
Take it, and perish ; but restrain your tongue ; 
Charge not, with light sufficient, and left free, 
Your willful suicide on God's decree. 

With what convincing clearness of argument and 
beauty of illustration does he show the worthless- 
ness of all hope but that which as an anchor to 
the soul, sure and steadfast, is cast within the vaiL 
Every confidence of heaven is dismissed as imagi- 



180 THE PHARISEE. 

nary and vain, whatever sect may rear, protect, 
and nourish it, 

If wild in nature, and not duly found, 
Gethsemane, in thy dear hallowed ground! 

The passage beginning, " Who judged the Phari- 
see ?" is a masterly comparison and inquisition 
of different forms of self-righteousness ; and how- 
beautiful the picture of the humble believing cot- 
tager, with her pillow, bobbins, and Bible, in con- 
trast with the demigod of Parisian applause, jesting 
at Scripture, exalted on his pedestal of pride, and 
to the last lured by his vanity to believe a lie, till 
the fumes of frankincense from his flatterers min- 
gled with the smoke that received him in the bot- 
tomless pit. Never were the fatal elements of a 
morality founded in selfishness and pride demon- 
strated in more direct and convincing analysis and 
light, than in this poem. And never with more 
attractive and subduing truth was the contrast 
drawn between such motives and the gratitude 
and love of the penitent believing heart, resting 
only on Christ. 

The poem entitled " Expostulation," is one of 
the highest and grandest exhibitions of Cowper's 
genius, unrivaled by any passages even in " The 
Task." Prom the first word in the opening line 
to the closing word in the last line, it is all fervid, 
glowing, and sublime, as if, like Dryden's Ode, it 



EXPOSTULATION. 181 

had been the composition of a single night, as if 
the subject had possessed him and carried him 
irresistibly away, instead of receiving the calm and 
careful application of his mind, day by day, and 
that, too, under the burden of nameless spiritual 
misery. It is a most extraordinary phenomenon, 
considering the known condition of the writer. It 
presents a career like Elijah's in the chariot of 
flame, yet the man is walking on earth, under 
clouds and darkness. With most impressive sub- 
limity Cowper reviewed the history of Judea and 
of England, and, as if burning with the prophetic 
fire of an old inspired Hebrew, applied the lessons 
of rebuke and warning to his country's sins. With 
what beauty and power does he proclaim the cer- 
tainty of retribution upon an unthankful, scornful 
land, asserting the only grounds of national secur- 
ity and prosperity, dependence upon God and 
obedience to His Word. The scathing lines ap- 
plied to the formalism and hypocrisy of the Estab- 
lished Church, are as truthful and terrible now as 
ever. 

When nations are to perish in their sins, 
'TIs in the Church the leprosy begins. 

Solemn and pungent are the questions with which 
the poet bids his country stand and judge herself 
as having incurred the anger of a holy God. And 
one of ihe most stunning interrogatories proclaims 



EXPOSTULATION. 

an iniquity imbedded in the very constitution of 
Church and State. 

Hast thou by statute showed from its design 

The Saviour's feast, His own blest bread and wine, 

And made the symbols of atoning grace 

An office-key, a picklock to a place, 

That infidels may prove their title good 

By an oath dipped in sacramental blood ? 

A blot that will be still a blot, in spite 

Of all that grave apologists may write, 

And though a bishop toil to cleanse the stain, 

He wipes and scours the silver cup in vain. 

The tide of impassioned feeling and scrutinizing 
thought in this poem is so free, so flowing, so in- 
tense, that it seems as if the whole must have 
been poured forth at one effort, a burning torrent 
of emotion and of truth. 

In these poems are to be found several of the 
most affecting notices, drawn evidently from his 
own experience of the misery of a guilty soul be- 
neath the terrors of conviction, and its happiness 
and gratitude in the discovery of the glory of 
God's grace. In the poem on " Truth" there is a 
brief but most impressive reference to the insanity 
of suicide, in the rejection of the Scriptures, which 
it is impossible not to regard as his own judgment 
on his own case. 

Thus often unbelief, grown sick of life, 
Flies to the tempting pool, or felon knife, 
The jury meet, the coroner is short, 
And lunacy the verdict of the court. 






HUMILITY AND FAITH. 188 

Reverse the sentence, let the truth be known, 

Such lunacy is ignorance alone ; 

They know not (what some bishops may not know) 

That Scripture is the only cure of woe. 

That field of promise, how it flings abroad 

Its odor o'er the Christian's thorny road ! 

The soul, reposing on assured relief, 

Feels herself happy amidst all her grief, 

Forgets her labor as she toils along, 

Weeps tears of joy, and bursts into a song. 

All joy to the believer 1 He can speak, 
Trembling, yet happy, confident, yet meek. 

Since the dear hour that brought me to Thy foot, 
And cut up all my follies by the root, 
I never trusted in an arm but Thine, 
Nor hoped, but in Thy righteousness divine. 
My prayers and alms, imperfect and defiled, 
"Were but the feeble efforts of a child. 
Howe'er performed, it was their brightest part 
That they proceeded from a grateful heart. 
Cleansed in Thine own all-purifying blood, 
Forgive their evil, and accept their good ; 
I cast them a* Thy feet ; — my only plea 
Is what it was, dependence upon Thee ; 
While struggling in the vale of tears b>elow, 
That never failed, nor shall it fail me now. 

Angelic gratulations rend the skies, 
Pride falls unpitied, never more to rise, 
Humility is crowned, and Faith receives the prize. 



Again, in the poem of " Hope" the author de- 
scribes the triumphs of immortal Truth, as the 
Parent of Hope, and bids all mere fancy stand 
aloof from his design, so that the light and shade, 
and every stroke in the picture, while trembling he 
undertakes to trace so divine a work, may be 
taken from reality. 



184 CONVICTION. 

For few believe the wonders Thou hast wrought, 
And none can teach them but whom Thou hast taught 

And indeed the picture here drawn is of a beauty 
and accuracy that can find no rival in the English 
language. The materials required to produce it 
are not at the command of the ordinary poet, how- 
ever acute, profound and vast his native genius, or 
all-entrancing and encompassing his imagination. 

If ever thou hast felt another's pain, 
If ever when he sighed hast sighed again, 
If ever on thine eyelid stood the tear 
■ That pity had engendered, drop one here. 

This man was happy — had the world's good word, 
And with it every joy it could afford. 
Friendship and love seemed tenderly at strife 
Which most should sweeten his untroubled life ; 
Politely learn'd, and of a gentle race, 
Good breeding and good sense gave all a grace ; 
And whether at the toilet of the fair ' 
He laughed and trifled, made him welcome there, 
Or if in masculine debate he shared, 
Insured him mute attention and regard. 
Alas, how changed ! Expressive of his mind, 
His eyes are sunk, arms folded, head reclined, 
Those awful syllables, hell, death, and sin, 
Though whispered, plainly tell what works within ; 
That conscience there performs her proper part, 
And writes a doomsday sentence on his heart ! 
Forsaking and forsaken of all friends, 
He now perceives where earthly pleasure ends. 
Hard task ! for one who lately knew no care, 
And harder still, as learned beneath despair ! 
His hours no longer pass unmarked away, 
A dark importance saddens every day. 
He hears the notice of the clock, perplexed, 
And cries, Perhaps eternity strikes next! 



FOBGIVENESS. 185 

Sweet music is no longer music here, 
And laughter sounds like madness in his ear. 
His grief the world of all her power disarms, 
Wine has no taste, and beauty has no charms. 
God's holy word, once trivial in his view, 
Now by the voice of his experience true, 
Seems, as it is, the fountain whence alone 
Must spring that hope he pants to make his own . 

Now let the bright reverse be known abroad; 
Say man's a worm, and power belongs to God. 
As when a felon, whom his country's laws 
Have justly doomed for some atrocious cause, 
Expects in darkness and heart-chilling fears, 
The shameful close of ail his misspent years ; 
If chance on heavy pinions slowly borne, 
A tempest usher in the dreaded morn, 
Upon his dungeon walls the lightnings play, 
The thunder seems to summon him away, 
The warder at the door his key applies, 
Shoots back the bolt, and all his courage dies. 
If then, just then, all thoughts of mercy lost, 
When Hope, long lingering at last yields the ghost, 
The sound of pardon pierce his startled ear, 
He drops at once his fetters and his fear. 
A transport glows in all he looks and speaks, 
And the first thankful tears bedew his cheeks. 
Joy, far superior joy, that much outweighs 
The comfort of a few poor added days, 
Invades, possesses, and o'erwhelms the soul 
Of him whom Hope has with a touch made whole. 
'Tis heaven, all heaven, descending on the wings 
Of the glad legions of the King of kings ; 
'Tis more — 'tis God diffused through every part, 
'Tis God Himself triumphant in his heai*t. 
welcome now the sun's once hated light ! 
His noonday beams were never half so bright. 
Not kindred minds alone are called to employ 
Their hours, their days, in listening to his joy ; 
Unconscious nature, all that he surveys, 
Rocks, groves, and streams must join him in his praise. 



186 SLAVERY. 

In these poems, in the piece on " Charity," we 
encounter the first expressive and energetic lines 
devoted by Cowper to the description of his ab- 
horrence of slavery. The sentiments are those not 
of a man merely, but a Christian ; not of our na- 
tive love of liberty — a constituent element in every 
human mind — but also as taught by grace, and by 
the charity which is the fairest and foremost in the 
train of graces. 

Oh most degrading of all ills that wait 
On man, a mourner in his best estate I 
All other sorrows virtue may endure, 
And find submission more than half a cure. 
Grief is itself a medicine, and bestowed 
To improve the fortitude that bears the load, 
To teach the wanderer, as his woes increase, 
The path of wisdom, all whose paths are peace. 
But slavery ! — Virtue dreads it as her grave : 
Patience itself is meanness in a slave : 
Or, if the will and sovereignty of God 
Bid suffer it awhile, and kiss the rod, 
"Wait for the dawning of a brighter day. 
And snap the chain the moment when you may. 
Nature imprints upon whate'er we see 
That has a heart and life in it, Be free ! 
The beasts are chartered — neither age nor force 
Can quell the love of freedom in a horse, 
He breaks the curb that held him at the rack 
And, conscious of an unincumbered back, 
Snuffs up the morning air, forgets the rein ; 
Loose fly his forelock and his ample mane ; 
Responsive to the distant neigh, he neighs, 
Nor stops, till overleaping all delays 
He finds the pasture where his fellows graze. 

Canst thou, and honored with a Christian name, 
Buy what is woman-born, and feel no shame ? 



EXPEDIENCY. 187 

Trade in the blood of innocence, and plead 

Expedience as a warrant for the deed ? 

So may the wolf, whom famine has made bold, 

To quit the forest and invade the fold. 

So may the ruffian, who with ghostly glide, 

Dagger in hand, steals close to your bedside ; 

Not he, but his emergence forced the door, 

He found it inconvenient to be poor. 

A Briton knows, or, if he knows it not, 
The Scripture placed within his reach, he ought, 
That souls have no discriminating hue, 
Alike important in their Maker's view ; - 
That none are free from blemish since the fall 
And love Divine has paid one price for all. 
The wretch that works and weeps without relief 
Has ONE that notices his silent grief. 
He from whose hand alone all power proceeds, 
Ranks its abuse among the foulest deeds, 
Considers all injustice with a frown, 
But marks the man that treads his fellow down. 
Remember, Heaven has an avenging rod ; 
To smite the poor is treason against G-od. 



CHAPTER XVI 



LADY AUSTEN. — JOHN GILPIN. — MADAME GUION. — THE COLUBRIAD. 
— COWPER'S EXQUISITE HUMOR. 



A short time before the publication of this vol- 
ume, the same Divine providence that had prepared 
for Cowper such a resting-place and home in the 
family of the Unwinds, brought to their acquaint- 
ance a new friend, whose lively wit, and influence 
over the mind of the poet, were to prove the occa- 
sion of the greatest production of his genius. This 
was Lady Austen, the widow of Sir Robert Austen, 
and sister of the wife of one of Cowper's neighbors, 
a clergyman at Clifton, about a mile from Olney. 
The conversational powers of this lady were great, 
and Cowper was pleased and delighted, for a sea- 
son, with her acquaintance and friendship. He 
described her to his friend, Mr. Unwin, as " a wo- 
man of fine taste and discernment, with many 
features of character to admire, but one in particu- 
lar, on account of the rarity of it, to engage your 
attention and esteem. She has a degree of grati- 
tude in her composition, so quick a sense of obli- 



LADY AUSTEN. 189 

gation, as is hardly to be found in any rank of 
life, and, if report say true, is scarce indeed in the 
superior. Discover but a wish to please her, and 
she never forgets it ; not only thanks you, but the 
tears will start into her eyes at the recollection . of 
the smallest service. With these fine feelings, she 
has the most harmless vivacity you can imagine." 
Lady Austen, for about two years, occupied as her 
residence the parsonage which Newton had vacated, 
the garden of which adjoined that of Cowper, with 
a door opened, by Newton, between them. During 
those two years the two families were on terms of 
intercourse so uninterrupted and intimate, that 
they almost made one household, and for a season 
were accustomed to dine alternately in each other's 
house. " Lady Austen and we," said Cowper in 
one of his letters to Mr. Unwin, " pass our days al- 
ternately at each other's chateau. In the morning 
I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the 
afternoon wind thread. Thus did Hercules, and 
thus probably did Samson, and thus do I ; and 
were both these heroes living, I should not fear to 
challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, 
or doubt to beat them both. As to killing lions, 
and other amusements of that kind, with which 
they were so delighted, I should be their humble 
servant, and beg to be excused." 

How animating and happy was the influence ex- 
erted by Lady Austen, and this agreeable change 



190 SILVER END. 

and excitement in their manner of life at Olney, 
upon the mind and spirits of Cowper may be judged 
from that exquisitely beautiful poem addressed to 
her in a letter during her absence for the first win- 
ter, in London. It has a meaning, judged by the 
result, even deeper than any anticipation in the 
mind of the writer ; for indeed by that friendship 
Divine providence was arranging the causes and 
occasions of the most precious and inestimable ef- 
fort of Cowper's genius. In this little epistle itself 
are some of the finest lines Cowper ever wrote. 

Mysterious are His ways, whose power 
Brings forth that unexpected hour 
"When minds that never met before 
Shall meet, unite, and part no more. 
It is the allotment of the skies, 
The hand of the Supremely Wise, 
That guides and governs our affections, 
And plans and orders our connections ; 
Directs us in our distant road, 
And marks the bounds of our abode. 
Thus we were settled when you found us, 
Peasants and children all around us, 
Not dreaming of so dear a friend, 
Deep in the abyss of Silver End. 
* * * * 

This page of Providence quite new, 
And now just opening to our view, 
Employs our present thoughts and pains 
To guess and spell what it contains ; 
But day by day, and year by year, 
Will make the dark enigma clear, 
And furnish us perhaps at last, 
Like other scenes already past, 
With proof that we and our affairs 



LADY AUTEN. 191 

Are part of a Jehovah's cares ; 
For God unfolds, by slow degrees, 
The purport of His deep decrees, 
Sheds every hour a clearer light 
In aid of our defective sight, 
And spreads at length before the soul 
A beautiful and perfect whole, 
Which busy man's inventive brain' 
Toils to anticipate in vain. 

Say, Anna, had you never known 
The beauties of a rose full blown, 
Could you, though luminous your eye, 
By looking on the bud, descry, 
Or guess, with a prophetic power, 
The future splendor of the flower ? 
Just so the Omnipotent, who turns 
The system of a world's concerns, 
From mere minutiae can educe 
Events of most important use, 
And bid a dawning sky display 
The blaze of a meridian day. 
The works of man tend one and all, 
As needs they must, from great to small, 
And vanity absorbs at length 
The monuments of human strength. 
But who can tell how vast the plan 
Which this day's incident began ? 
Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion 
For our dim-sighted observation, 
It passed unnoticed, as the bird 
That cleaves the yielding air unheard, 
And yet may prove, when understood, 
A harbinger of endless good. 

The friendship of Lady Austen was a cordial in- 
fluence provided for him at a period when the cloud 
of dejection upon his mind seemed to be gathering 
unusual blackness. His interesting and absorbing 
occupation with his first poetical volume was ended 



192 ANIMATING INFLUENCE. 

by its publication, and as yet nothing had come to 
supply its place. Some of the criticisms upon that 
volume had a depressing effect upon his spirits for 
a season, and would even have led him, he some- 
where intimates, to renounce poetry altogether, 
had it not been for the friendly and encouraging 
admiration of his volume expressed by Dr. Frank- 
lin. Cowper told his friend Unwin that he felt, on 
after consideration, " rather ashamed of having 
been at all dejected by the censure of the critical 
reviewers, who certainly could not read without 
prejudice a book replete with opinions and doctrines 
to which they could not subscribe." Southey re- 
marked, in regard to the same unfavorable review, 
that " without prejudice on the score of opinions, 
and without individual ill-will, or the envious dis- 
position which not unfrequently produces the same 
effect, a dull critic or a pert one is generally ready 
enough to condemn what he wants heart to feel, or 
understanding to appreciate. This reviewal of 
Cowper's first volume is one of those defunct criti- 
cisms which deserves to be disinterred and gibbeted 
for the sake of example/' 

Among the expedients devised by Lady Austen 
to please and animate the mind of Cowper, when 
the alarming tendency to deep dejection was again 
becoming manifest, and occupation and amuse- 
ment were requisite, was the happy gift of a small 
portable printing-press, on which he could strike 



JOHN GILPIN. 193 

off his own compositions. At the same time one 
of his dearest friends and correspondents, the Kev. 
Mr. Bull, of Newport Pagnell, a dissenting minis- 
ter of deep piety and varied learning and abilities, 
put the poetry of Madame Guion into his hands, 
and engaged him in the pleasant and beneficial 
labor of translating many of her pieces into English 
verse. In the letter to his friend Unwin, giving 
an account of this employment, he related in his 
exquisitely sportive way, an encounter which he 
had witnessed between a kitten and a viper, which 
he also threw into the shape of verse in that 
amusing piece of humor entitled the " Colubriad." 
Some of the most beautiful songs were also com- 
posed by the poet, for Lady Austen to set them to 
appropriate music, and play them upon the harp- 
sichord. One of these songs was the ballad on the 
" Loss of the Koyal George," with Admiral Kem- 
penfelt and her whole crowded crew of eight hun- 
dred men. This was one of Cowper's most favorite 
compositions : " Toll for the Brave," He translated 
it into Latin. 

At the same time, or very near it, on the occa- 
sion of a story related by Lady Austen, he com- 
posed the humorous ballad of " John Gilpin," and 
the success of the effort had the happiest effect 
upon his own spirits. He was sinking into deep 
dejection. Lady Austen, who had been accus- 
tomed to try every possible resource for his relief, 
9 



194 JOHN GILPIN. 

observed with pain, in their evening circle, how 
the cloud was deepening, and remembering from 
her childhood the story of "John Gilpin," repeated 
it to Cowper with such admirable merriment and 
humor that, as Hayley says, " its effect upon his 
fancy had the air of enchantment." He told Lady 
Austen the next morning that the drollery took 
such possession of him that during the greater 
part; of the night he had been kept awake by con- 
vulsions of laughter, brought on by the recollection 
of her story ; and indeed that he could not help 
turning it into a ballad. The piece immediately 
became celebrated, for his friend Unwin sent it at 
onco to the " Public Advertiser." It was recited 
with great comic power by Henderson ; it made 
Cowper's friends laugh tears ; and it proved an 
inexhaustible source of merriment with multitudes 
who never dreamed of Cowper being the author. 
" They do not always laugh so innocently, and at 
so small an expense," said Cowper in a letter to 
his friend Unwin : " a melancholy that nothing 
else so effectually disperses, engages me in the 
arduous task of being merry by force ; and, strange 
as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever 
wrote have been written in the saddest mood ; 
and, but for that saddest mood, perhaps had never 
been written at all." Three years afterward, . 
while " The Task" was passing through the press, 
"John Gilpin," which had not even then been 



JOHN GILPIN. 195 

published with Cowper's name, was recited by- 
Henderson at a series of nightly readings to 
crowded audiences in London. The ballad was 
reprinted from the old newspaper, and " Gilpin," 
passing at full stretch by " The Bell" at Edmon- 
ton, was to be seen in all the print-shops. One 
printseller sold six thousand, and Southey in- 
forms us that the profits of these recitations by a 
reader so unrivaled as Henderson, were eight 
hundred pounds. Southey says, that at the close 
of One of his performances, a person from the 
crowd wriggled up to him and exclaimed, " Pray, 
who did teach you to read, Mr. Henderson ?" 
" My mother, sir," was his reply. 

Newton told Cowper what amusement his 
famous horseman was giving to the public ; but 
the letter elicited a sad reply, (though not so 
sad as he sometimes wrote,) for he was now again 
passing, without the company of Newton, through 
the valley of the shadow of death. " I have pro- 
duced many things," said he, "under the influence 
of despair, which hope would not have permitted 
to spring. But if the soil of that melancholy in 
which I have walked so long has thrown up here 
and there an unprofitable fungus, it is well at 
least that it is not chargeable with having brought 
forth poison. Like you, I see, or think I can see, 
that Gilpin may have its use. Causes in appear- 
ance trivial produce often the most beneficial con- 



196 JOURNEY TO CLIFTON. 

sequences ; and perhaps my volumes may now 
travel to a distance which, if they had not been 
ushered into the world by that notable horseman, 
they would never have reached." 

It was just about the time of the composition 
of this ballad that Cowper wrote another, for 
Lady Austen to compose the music, being a play- 
ful account of a journey attempted by Cowper 
and Mrs. Unwin to Clifton, the abode of Lady 
Austen's sister in their neighborhood. Cowper 
entitled it "The distressed Travelers, or Labor in 
vain, an excellent new song to a tune never sung 
before." This poem was published in the " Monthly 
Magazine" for January 1808, but from that time to 
the publication of Southey's edition of the works 
of the poet in 1836, was never printed in any col- 
lection : 

I sing of a journey to Clifton 

We would have performed, if we could, 
Without cart or barrow to lift on 

Poor Mary and me through the flood. 
Slee, sla, slud, 
Stuck in the mud ; 
Oh, it is pretty to wade through a flood! 

So away we went slipping and sliding 

Hop, hop, d la mode de deux frogs. 
'Tis near as good walking as riding 
When ladies are dressed in their clogs. 
Wheels no doubt, 
Go briskly about, 
But they clatter, and rattle, and moke such a rout 



JOURNEY TO CLIFTON. 197 

SHE. 

"Well now, I protest, it is charming ; 

How finely the weather improves ! 
That cloud, though, is rather alarming ; 

How slowly and stately it moves ! 

HE. 

Pshaw ! never mind ; 
'Tis not in the wind ; 
We are traveling south, and shall leave it behind. 

SHE. 

I am glad we are come for an airing, 
For folks may be pounded and penned, 

Until they grow rusty, not caring 
To stir half a mile to an end. 

HE. 

The longer we stay 

The longer we may ; 

It is a folly to think about weather or way. 

SHE. 

But now I begin to be frighted ; 

If I fall, what a way I should roll ! 
I am glad that the bridge was indicted — 

Stop I stop I I am sunk in a hole ! 

HE. 

Nay, never care ! 
'Tis a common affair ; 
You '11 not be the last that will set a foot there. 

SHE. 

Let me breathe now a little, and ponder 

On what it were better to do ; 
That terrible lane I see yonder 

I think we shall never get through. 

HE. 

So I think, I, 
But by the by, 
We never shall know, if we never should try. 



198 JOURNEY TO CLIFTON. 

SKE. 

But should we get there how shah we get home ? 
"What a terrible deal of bad road we have past ! 
Slipping and sliding, and if we should come 
To a difficult stile, I am ruined at last. 
Oh this lane ! 
ISTow it is plain, 
That struggling and striving is labor in vain. 

HE. 

Stick fast, then, while I go and look. 

SHE. 

Don't go away, for fear I should fall I 

HE. 

I have examined it every nook, 

And what you have here is a sample of all. 
Come, wheel round ; 
The dirt we have found 
Would be an estate at a farthing a pound. 

Now, sister Ann, the guitar you must take. 

Set it, and sing it, and make it a song. 
I have varied the verse for variety's sake, 
And cut it off short because it was long. 
'Tis hobbling and lame, 
"Which critics won't blame, 
For the sense and the sound they say should be the same. 

Such pieces as these reveal a ruling charac- 
teristic of Cowper's mind ; heart, and fancy. It 
was a propensity to fun and humor, as deep and 
genuine as ever accompanied or constituted the 
power of genius. But in the extreme it is a dan- 
gerous characteristic. It was in him so strong a 
disposition, that unless it had been repressed by 
the prevalence of his constitutional malady, it 



WIT CHASTENED. 199 

must have worked mischief, must have absorbed 
and triumphed over the graver meditative power 
of his imagination, and might have ruled in his 
works to the exclusion of serious and religious 
themes, instead of sparkling in them, and sweetly, 
richly coloring and enlivening them. The tend- 
ency and habit of jocoseness, indulged and cher- 
ished, have gone sometimes even in clergymen to 
an extreme that has quite destroyed their useful- 
ness ; and, had it not been for Cowper's mental 
depression, perhaps he would have continued in 
life just as he says he set out, only to giggle and 
to make giggle. With such an exhilarating fount- 
ain of humor and enjoyment of wit, and such an 
irresistible proneness to laughable and comic de- 
scription, had he been permitted by uninterrupted 
health and elasticity of spirits to mingle freely 
with the polished circles of his family in high and 
fashionable life, the society by which he must have 
been surrounded would have borne him away 
upon its surface, and he never would have been 
known as " England's Christian poet/' Perhaps 
it was necessary, for the consecration of his genius 
to the highest themes, to mingle that gloom of 
depression in the habit of his heart ; if so, then 
that exquisitely beautiful hymn, composed on the 
eve of his madness, had a meaning extended over 
his whole life, of which he little dreamed. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

/ 

COWPER'S PASSION FOR FUN AND HUMOR. — THE DISCIPLINE TO 
BALANCE IT. — EXQUISITE LESSONS AND SCENES OF SOCIAL JOY 
IN HIS POEMS. — MINGLED SPORTIVENESS AND SOLEMNITY OF HIS 
LETTERS TO NEWTON. 

Performance in this world is often prevented 
by theoretical perfection ; and one evil has to be 
set to keep guard over another. The skillful work- 
man has to prepare his finest gold for use and 
workmanship with a portion of alloy. A cold day 
in nature is sometimes necessary to set the vegeta- 
tion ; and storms are necessary to prevent even 
our finest weather from injuring us. Cowper's na- 
tive tendency to social pleasantry and humor per- 
haps needed to be chastened, or at least balanced, 
for under all his gloom the drollest recollections 
were sometimes uppermost in his mind. The only 
thing he remembered of his friend Hill's poetry in 
the Nonsense Club, in their early days, was the 
Homeric line, " To whom replied the Devil, yard- 
long tailed." Such snatches of ludicrous recollec- 
tions he is continually presenting in his letters ; 
one of them to Newton he finishes with a reference 






A MERRY HEART. 201 

to Dr. Scott, of the close of whose sermon he gives 
Newton an account of a droll blunder made by 
the preacher, who, quoting a passage of Scripture, 
said to his hearers, " Open your wide mouths, and 
I will fill them." 

Now nothing is more delightful, more genial, 
and congenial than such a disposition. Deliver us 
from men who can not relish pleasantry, and, if 
need be, even in the midst of misery ; such men 
can not have your entire confidence, but are to be 
held as Shakspeare or Luther would have regarded 
men who hated music. " A merry heart doeth good 
like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the 
bones." But the ceaseless thirst and craving for 
amusement and merriment, as if it were the whole 
of life, is a fever that dries and consumes the soul 
more fatally. A creature constituted with a very 
keen relish for the pleasures of a merry circle, and 
habituated to rely upon them, is not fitted to en- 
counter any change of weather, or to ride through 
rough seas. Such a person is like a vessel carelessly 
loaded with such materials, that there is danger of 
a sudden shifting of the cargo, and inevitable ship- 
wreck in consequence. 

Luxury gives the mind a childish cast, 
And while she polishes, perverts the taste. 
Habits of close attention, thinking heads, 
Become more rare as dissipation spreads, 
Till authors hear at length one general cry, 
Tickle and entertain us, or we die. 
9* 



202 A MERRY HEART. 

There is a higher quality. " Is any merry ? Let 
hirn sing psalms ;" that taste and faculty is the ce- 
lestial balance in the soul. If any man has learned 
to do that with the heart, he has learned it on such 
grounds as have taught him most solemnly and 
profoundly the madness of the man of mere mirth- 
fulness ; but there is room for happiness and joy 
in his affections, his mind, his whole being, to the 
utmost extent to which occasion may ever call for 
merriment. But until he has learned to do that, 
until he has gained that hope which is an anchor 
in eternity, the end of his mirth is heaviness ; for, 
" Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry," is the 
rule, but the heart of fools is in the house where 
such mirth reigns, and folly is joy, and joy is folly 
to him that is destitute of wisdom. 

That proverb also is as full of truth as pithiness, 
that " the laughter of fools is like the crackling of 
thorns under a pot;" and persons who live for noth- 
ing but to giggle and make giggle are the most un- 
mirthful beings in the world. Cowper's early asso- 
ciates, when he knew nothing higher or better than 
worldly mirth, were sad illustrations. A creature 
suddenly paralyzed and stiffened in the act and 
attitude of boisterous laughter would be a hideous 
sight ; but an immortal being who knows nothing 
but giggling and merriment, and imagines that life 
has no other end than such uninterrupted enjoyment, 



SOCIAL HAPPINESS. 203 

would be, to spiritual spectators at least, a much 
more deplorable spectacle. 

How beautiful, in this connection, are Cowper's 
lines on social life and conversation, along with that 
exquisite picture of the walk to Emmaus. Well 
might Cowper ask, 

Is sparkling wit the world's exclusive right ? 
The fixed fee-simple of the vain and light ? 

Nay, does it not much rather belong to those who 
have received in fee-simple an eternal inheritance 
of love, joy, peace ? Assuredly the hope of heaven 
can not quench or obscure the play of a faculty 
whose happiest permanent abode is in that mind 
which is the most serene and thoughtful. Piety 
restrains and curbs its wantonness, and prevents it 
from assuming the part of the mere trifler, and 
thus at the same time gives it a usefulness unknown 
before, and makes it shine the brighter for its puri- 
fication. Such -conclusions were the fruits of Cow- 
per's own experience, having tried both the paths 
of this world's merriment and of religious peace 
and joy ; and he has thrown the celestial knowledge 
he had gained into some of the most beautiful les- 
sons and pictures of his poetry. 

The mind dispatched upon her busy toil, 
Should range where Providence has bless'd the soil ; 
Visiting every flower with labor meet, 
And gathering all her treasures, sweet by sweet, 



204 THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 

She should imbue the tongue with what she sips, 
And shed the balmy blessing on the lips, 
That good diffused may more abundant grow, 
And speech may praise the power that bids it flow. 

Yet Fashion, leader of a chattering train, 
Whom man for his own hurt permits to reign, 
Who shifts and changes all things but his shape, 
And would degrade her votary to an ape. 
The fruitful parent of abuse and wrong. 
Holds a usurped dominion o'er his tongue ; 
Here sits and prompts him with his own disgrace. 
Prescribes the theme, the tone, and the grimace, 
And, when accomplished in her wayward school, 
Calls gentleman whom she has made a fool. 
'Tis an unalterable fixed decree, 
That none could frame or ratify but she, 
That heaven and hell, and righteousness and sin, 
Snares in his path, and foes that lurk within, 
God and His attributes (a field of day 
Where 'tis an angel's happiness to stray) 
Fruits of his love, and wonders of his might, 
Be never named in ears esteemed polite ; 
That he who dares, when she forbids, be grave, 
Shall stand proscribed, a madman or a knave, 
A close designer, not to be believed, 
Or, if excused that charge, at least deceived. 
* * -;:• * * * 

The time is short, and there are souls on earth, 
Though future pain may serve for present mirth, 
Acquainted with the woes that fear or shame 
By fashion taught, forbade them once to name, 
And having felt the pangs you deem a jest, 
Have proved them truths too big to be expressed. 
Go seek on revelation's hallowed ground, 
Sure to succeed, the remedy they found ; 
Touched by that Power that you have dared to mock, 
That makes seas stable, and dissolves the rock, 
Your heart shall yield a life-renewing stream, 
That fools, as you have done, shall call a dream. 
It happened on a solemn evening tide, 



THE WALK TOEMMAUS. 205 

Soon after He that was our Surety died, 

Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined, 

The scene of all those sorrows left behind, 

Sought their own village, busied as they went, 

In musings worthy of the great event. 

They spake of Him they loved, of Him whose life. 

Though blameless, had incurred perpetual strife, 

Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts, 

A deep memorial graven on their hearts. 

The recollection, like a vein of ore, 

The further traced, enriched them still the more. 

They thought Him, and they justly thought Him, one 

Sent to do more than He appeared to have done, 

To exalt a people, and to place them high 

Above all else ; and wondered He should die. 

Ere yet they brought their journey to an end, 

A stranger joined them courteous as a friend, 

And asked them, with a kind, engaging air, 

What their affliction was, and begged a share. 

Informed, He gathered up the broken thread. 

And, truth and wisdom gracing all He said, 

Explained, illustrated, and touched so well 

The tender theme on which they chose to dwell, 

That, reaching home, the night, they said, is near, 

We must not now be parted, sojourn here. 

The new acquaintance soon became a guest, 

And made so welcome at their simple feast, 

He bless'd the bread, but vanished at the word, 

And left them both exclaiming, '"T was the Lord 1 

Did not our hearts feel all He deigned to say, 

Did they not burn within us by the way ?" 

Now theirs was converse, such as it behooves 
Man to maintain, and such as God approves. 
Their views indeed were indistinct and dim, 
But yet successful, being aimed at Him. 
Christ and His character their only scope, 
Their object, and their subject, and their hope. 
They felt what it became them much to feel 
And, wanting Him to loose the sacred seal, 
Found him as prompt as their desire was true 
To spread the new-born glories in their view. 



206 THE WALK TO EMMAUS. 

Well ! what are ages, and the lapse of time, 
Matched against truths as lasting as sublime ? 
Can length of years on God Himself exact ? 
Or make that fiction which was once a fact? 
No ! marble and recording brass decay, 
And, like the graver's memory, pass away ; 
The works of man inherit, as is just, 
Their author's frailty, and return to dust 
But truth Divine forever stands secure, 
Its head is guarded, as its base is sure ; 
Fixed in the rolling flood of endless years 
The pillar of the eternal plan appears, 
The raving storm and dashing wave defies, 
Built by that Architect who built the skies. 
Hearts may be found, that harbor at this hour 
That love of Christ, and all its quickening power, 
And lips unstained by folly or by strife, 
Whose wisdom, drawn from the deep well of life, 
Tastes of its healthful origin, and flows, 
A Jordan for the ablution of our woes. 
days of heaven, and nights of equal praise, 
Serene and peaceful as those heavenly days, 
When souls drawn upward in communion sweet, 
Enjoy the stillness of some close retreat, 
Discourse, as. if released, and safe at home, 
Of dangers past, and wonders yet to come, 
And spread the sacred treasures of the breast 
Upon the lap of covenanted rest ! 

In contrast with this most attractive and de- 
lightful picture, let us note how the sight of the un- 
devout gayety of a thoughtless world, in one of the 
great exchanges of its mirthfulness, affected Cow- 
per. He is writing his friend Unwin in regard to 
the scenes at Brighton. " There is not, I think, 
so melancholy a sight in the world (a hospital is 
not to be compared with it) as that of a thousand 






THOUGHTLESSNESS. 20T 

persons distinguished by the name of gentry, who, 
gentle perhaps by nature, and made more gentle 
by education, have the appearance of being inno- 
cent and inoffensive, yet being destitute of all re- 
ligion, or not at all governed by the religion they 
profess, are none of them at any great distance 
from an eternal state, where self-deception will be 
impossible, and where amusements can not enter. 
Some of them, we may say, will be reclaimed ; it 
is most probable, indeed, that some of them will, 
because mercy, if one may be allowed the expres- 
sion, is fond of distinguishing itself by seeking its 
objects among the most desperate class ; but the 
Scripture gives no encouragement to the warmest 
charity to hope for deliverance for them all. When 
I see an afflicted and unhappy man, I say to my- 
self, there is, perhaps, a man whom the world 
would envy, if they knew the value of his sorrows, 
which are possibly intended only to soften his 
heart, and to turn his aUections toward their prop- 
er center. But when I see or hear of a crowd of 
voluptuaries who have no ears but for music, no 
eyes but for splendor, and no tongue but for im- 
pertinence and folly, I say, or at least I see occa- 
sion to say, ' This is madness ; this, persisted in, 
must have a tragical conclusion. It will condemn 
you not only as Christians unworthy of the name, 
but as intelligent creatures. You know by the 
light of nature, if you have not quenched it, that 



208 



SPORTIVE NESS 



there is a God, and that a life like yours can not 
be according to His will/ " 

Some of Cowper's letters to Newton, as well as 
his other correspondents, are exquisitely sportive. 
His sense of the ludicrous was keen and delicate, 
and no man that ever wrote English was happier 
in his descriptions of humorous and ridiculous 
scenes and encounters. We may refer, for illus- 
tration in his prose, to his letter to Newton, giving 
an account of the beadle thrashing the thief, the 
constable the beadle, and the lady the constable ; 
a story which in rhyme would have made a rival of 
"John Grilpin," and would give some original Cruik- 
shanks in engraving a subject of admirable humor. 
His description of the life of an Antediluvian, and 
also of the chase that took place in Olney on the 
escape of his tame hare, and of the donkey that 
ran away with the market-woman ; as also his 
letters in the form of prose, but in swift galloping 
metre, are happy illustrations of his native pro- 
pensity and power. Perhaps the very drollest 
letters in the whole of his private correspondence 
as well as the darkest and gloomiest, are to New- 
ton ; sufficiently refuting the ill-natured insinua- 
tion which we have already had occasion to notice 
on the part of Southey, that it seemed as if Cow- 
per always went to his correspondence with. Newton 
as if he were a sinner going to the confessional, or 
toiling under a task. There are numerous inci- 







THE HARE 



Cheever's Cowper 



p. 20ri 



HUMOROUS LETTERS, 209 

dental notices, as well as whole epistles, that 
demonstrate how very unjust any intimation of this 
nature must have been ; unjust to Cowper himself 
as well as Newton, and conveying an idea of con- 
straint, if not dissimulation, where there was never 
any thing but openness and freedom. 

For example, Cowper sent to Newton, in one of 
his letters, the following lines, entitled Mary and 
John : 

If John marries Mary, and Mary alone, 

'Tis a very good match between Mary and John. 

Should John wed a score, oh the claws and the scratches ! 

It can't be a match ; 'tis a bundle of matches. 

In another letter, November 27, 1781, he refers to 
this trifle, and says to Newton, " I never wrote a 
copy of ' Mary and John' in my life, except that 
which I sent to you. It was one of those bagatelles 
which sometimes spring up like mushrooms in my 
imagination, either while I am writing, or just be- 
fore I begin. I sent it to you, because to you I send 
any thing that I think may raise a smile, but 
should never have thought of multiplying the im- 
pression/' 

Now let us take, as additional instances of the 
familiar and playful attitude of his mind in his 
correspondence with Newton, first, an amusing let- 
ter, which beautifully sets forth his motive and man- 
ner in writing his admirable poem " On Charity ;" 
and second, as an example of the spontaneous ease 



210 LETTERS TO NEWTON. 

with which his thoughts flowed in the particular 
form of versification in which that poem was cast, 
his poetical letter to Mrs. Newton, thanking her 
for a present of oysters. Both these epistles were 
in the same year, 1781. 

" My very dear friend, I am going to send, what 
when you have read, you may scratch your head, 
and say I suppose, there 's nobody knows, whether 
what I have got, be verse or not ; — by the tune and 
the time, it ought to be rhyme ; but if it be, did 
ever you see, of late or of yore, such a ditty before ? 

" I have writ i Charity/ not for popularity, but 
as well as I could, in hopes to do good ; and if the 
1 Keviewer' should say to be sure, the gentleman's 
muse wears Methodist shoes, you may know by her 
pace, and talk about grace, that she and her bard 
have little regard for the taste and fashions, and 
ruling passions, and hoidening play, of the modern 
day ; and though she assume a borrowed plume, 
and now and then wear a tittering air, 'tis only her 
plan, to catch if she can, the giddy and gay, as 
they go that way, by a production of a new con- 
struction ; she has baited her trap, in the hope to 
snap all that may come, with a sugar-plum. His 
opinion in this will not be amiss ; 'tis what I in- 
tend, my principal end ; and if I succeed, and 
folks should read, till a few are brought to a serious 
thought, I shall think I am paid for all I have 



LETTEBS TO NEWTON. 211 

said, and all I have done, although I have ran, 
many a time, after a rhyme, as far as from hence 
to the end of my sense, and by hook or by crook, 
write another book, if I live and am here, another 
year. 

" I have heard before of a room with a floor, laid 
upon springs, and such like things, with so much 
art in every part, that when you went in, you was 
forced to begin a minuet pace, with an air and a 
grace, swimming about, now in and now out, with 
a deal of state, in a figure of eight, without pipe 
or string, or any such thing ; and now I have writ, 
in a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and 
as you advance, will keep you still, though against 
your w T ill, dancing away, alert and gay, till you 
come to an end of what I have penn'd, which that 
you may do, ere madam and you are quite worn 
out with jigging about, I take my leave, and here 
you receive a bow profound, down to the ground, 
from your humble me. — W. C." 

The other epistle to Mrs. Newton is one of the 
happiest specimens of Cowper's perfectly natural 
and easy command of the best language, the apt- 
est familiar words, trooping spontaneously to their 
places in flowing and harmonious verse ; an illus- 
tration of what he once told Mr. Unwin, that when 
he thought at all, he thought most naturally in 
rhyme. 



212 LETTERS TO NEWTON. 

A noble theme demands a noble verse, 
In such I thank you for your fine oysters. 
The barrel was magnificently large, 
' But being sent to Olney at free charge, 
Was not inserted in the driver's list, 
And therefore overlooked, forgot, or missed. 
For when the messenger whom we dispatched 
Inquired for oysters, Hob his noddle scratched, 
Denying that his wagon or his wain 
Did any such commodity contain, 
In consequence of which, your welcome boon 
Did not arrive till yesterday at noon ; 
In consequence of which some chanced to die, 
And some, though very sweet, were very dry. 
Now madam says (and what she says must still 
Deserve attention, say she what she will) 
That what we call the diligence, lecase 
It goes to London with a swifter pace, 
Would better suit the carriage of your gift, 
Returning downward with a pace as swift; 
And therefore recommends it with this aim, 
To save at least three days, the price the same ; 
For though it will not carry or convey 
For less than twelve pence, send whate'er you may, 
For oysters bred upon the salt sea-shore, 
Packed in a barrel, they will charge no more. 
News have I none that I can deign to write, 
Save that it rained prodigiously last night ; 
And that ourselves were, at the seventh hour, 
Caught in the first beginning of the shower ; 
But walking, running, and with much ado, 
Got home, just time enough to be wet through, 
Yet both are well, and wondrous to be told, 
Soused as we were, we yet have caught no cold ; 
And wishing just the same good hap to you, 
We say, good madam, and good sir, adieu. 

At a date some two years later than this, he tells 
Newton that he would as soon allow himself the 
liberty of writing a sheet full of trifles to one of 



LETTERS TO NEWTON. 213 

the four Evangelists, as to him. But very speed- 
ily after that, we find him writing to the same 
friend with as much drollery as ever. The truth 
is, he always wrote according to the frame of his 
mind and feelings at the moment, and on whatever 
topic the train of association landed him when put- 
ting pen to paper, on that he wrote just what spon- 
taneously he thought and felt. The writing of 
letters was never irksome to him, though the be- 
ginning of them sometimes was. He told Newton 
in one of his letters in 1784, that the morning was 
his writing time, but in the morning he had no 
spirits, and therefore so much the worse for his 
correspondents. " As the evening approaches, .1 
grow more alert, and when I am retiring to bed, 
am more fit for mental occupation than at any 
other time. So it fares with us whom they call 
nervous. The watch is irregularly wound up ; it 
goes in the night when it is not wanted, and in the 
day stands still." 

A year previous to this, he had been more de- 
jected and distressed than usual, so much so, that 
even a visit from Newton, " the friend of his heart, 
with whom he had formerly taken sweet counsel/' 
not only failed to comfort him, but added, as he 
said, the bitterness of mortification to the sadness 
of despair. His nights were becoming a terror to 
him, and he told Newton that he was more and 
more harassed by dreams in the night, and more 



214 LETTERS TO NEWTON. 

deeply poisoned by them in the following day. He 
feared a return of his malady in all its force. " I 
know the ground/' said he, " before I tread upon 
it. It is hollow ; it is agitated ; it suffers shocks 
in every direction ; it is like the soil of Calabria — ■ 
all whirlpool and undulation." Happily, these 
terrible forebodings were not then fulfilled ; it was 
not till four years had elapsed that the dreaded 
prostration came ; and his letters continued to be 
as cheerful as usual. The following to Newton in 
1784, beautifully shows what a combination of en- 
joyment in the rural sights and sounds of nature, 
and of solemn meditation on the verge of what 
seemed an eternal gloom, at once occupied his 
sensibilities. 

" My greenhouse is never so pleasant as when 
we are just upon the point of being turned out of 
it. The gentleness of the autumnal suns, and the 
calmness of this latter season, make it a much 
more agreeable retreat than we ever find it in the 
summer ; when, the winds being generally brisk, 
we can not cool it by admitting a sufficient quan- 
tity of air, without being at the same time incom- 
moded by it. But now I sit with all the windows 
and the door wide ■ open, and am regaled with the 
scent of every flower, in a garden as full of flowers 
as I have known how to make it. We keep no 
bees, but if I lived in a hive, I should hardly hear 
more of their music. All the bees in the neighbor- 



RURAL SOUNDS. 215 

hood resort to a bed of niignionette, opposite to 
the window, and pay me for the honey they get 
out of it by a hum, which, though rather monoto- 
nous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling of 
my linnets. All the sounds that nature utters are 
delightful, at least in this country. I should not, 
perhaps, find the roaring of lions in Africa, or of 
bears in Kussia very pleasing, but I know no beast 
in England whose voice I do not account musical, 
save and except always the braying of an ass. 
The notes of all our birds and fowls please me 
without an exception. I should not, indeed, think 
of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang 
him up in the parlor for the sake of his melody, 
but a goose upon a common or in a farm-yard is 
no bad performer ; and as to insects, if the black 
beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out 
of my way, I have no objection to any of the rest : 
on the contrary, in whatever key they sing, from 
the gnat's fine treble to the base of the humble 
bee, I admire them all. 

" Seriously, however, it strikes me as a very ob- 
servable instance of Providential kindness to man, 
that such an exact accord has been contrived be- 
tween his ear and the sounds with which, at least 
in a rural situation, it is almost every moment 
visited. All the world is sensible of the uncom- 
fortable effect that certain sounds have often upon 
the nerves, and consequently upon the spirits. 



216 RURAL SOUNDS. 

And if a sinful world had been filled with such as 
would have curdled the blood, and have made the 
sense of hearing a perpetual inconvenience, I do not 
know that we should have had a right to complain. 
But now the fields, the woods, the gardens, have 
each their concert, and the ear of man is forever 
regaled by creatures who seem only to please them- 
selves. Even the ears that are deaf to the Gospel 
are continually entertained, though without know- 
ing it, by sounds for which they are solely indebted 
to its Author. There is somewhere in infinite 
space a world that does not roll within the pre- 
cincts of mercy, and as it is reasonable, and 
even Scriptural to suppose that there is music in 
heaven, in those dismal regions perhaps the re- 
verse of it is found ; tones so dismal as to make 
woe itself more insupportable, and to acuminate 
even despair. But my paper admonishes me in 
good time to draw the reins, and to check the 
descent of my fancy into deeps with which she is 
but too familiar." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



LADY AUSTEN'S SUGGESTION OP " THE SOFA." — COMPOSITION OF 
" THE TASK." — EXASPERATION OF COWPER'S GLOOM. — PECULI- 
ARITIES AND CAUSES OF IT. 



In the early part of the summer of 1783, Lady 
Austen was endeavoring to prevail upon Cowper, 
as she had often done without success, to tiy his 
poetical powers in blank verse. At length he 
promised her that he would do so, if she would 
furnish him with a subject. " Oh," said she, "you 
can write upon any thing ; you can never be in 
want of a subject ; write upon this sofa." This 
answer, made without a moment's reflection, seems 
to have fallen like a kindling element, suggestive, 
exciting, into the poet's mind. Perhaps it roused 
up in a moment a train of domestic pictures, asso- 
ciations, enjoyments : at any rate it set Cowper to 
thinking, and forthwith he began a poem on that 
very theme, which wandered on, from subject to 
subject, from book to book, in pleasing, graceful 
variety, till it grew to the foinn of that finest pro- 
duction of his genius, "The Task," one of the 
10 



218 COMPOSITION OF 

most truly religious, yet one of the most popular 
poems in the English language. The first book, 
" The Sofa/' was completed in August 1783, hav- 
ing been begun probably in June ; and in Novem- 
ber 1784, the whole poem had gone to the press. 
Cowper was, therefore, engaged upon it about a 
year and three months. He wrote sometimes an 
hour a day, sometimes half an hour, sometimes 
two hours ; and he says that he found it a severe 
exercise to mould and fashion the composition to 
his mind. Whether he was engaged upon a seri- 
ous or comic subject, he has himself remarked that 
the deep dejection of his spirits never seemed to 
interfere in the least degree with the activity of 
his mental powers. 

During the whole period of the composition of 
this exquisite poem, so tender and sacred in feel- 
ing, so rich and heavenly in religious thought, so 
inspired at once with the sweetest contrition and 
faith of a submissive and believing heart, and the 
sublimest fervor of devotion, Cowper's own religious 
gloom was almost uninterrupted. He thought 
himself shut out, by a particular edict, from God's 
mercy, excluded forever from heaven, and doomed 
to destruction. He thought that for him there 
was no access to the mercy-seat, that he had no 
right to pray ; indeed, he told his friend Mr. Bull, 
in one of his letters, that he had not asked a bless- 
ing upon his food for ten years, and did not expect 



THE TASK. 219 

that he should ever ask it again. " Prove to me," 
said he, " that I have a right to pray, and I will 
pray without ceasing ; yea, and pray too even in 
the belly of this hell, compared with which Jonah's 
was a palace, a temple of the living God. But, let 
me add, there is no encouragement in the Scripture 
so comprehensive as to include my case, nor any 
consolation so effectual as to reach it." " And yet 
the sin by which I am excluded from the privi- 
leges I once enjoyed, you would account no sin ; 
you would tell me that it was a duty." 

In such passages as these we seem to be looking 
into the blackness of darkness ; it is an incompre- 
hensible mystery of madness and despair. The 
imaginary sin to which Cowper here refers, must 
have been his refusing to yield to the temptation, 
a second time presented in his insanity, of self- 
destruction, or his not renewing the attempt, when 
mercifully frustrated ; a temptation under the Sa- 
tanic infernal delusion of its being a sacrifice to 
which God called him, so that his not performing 
it had shut the door of God's mercy against him 
forever. Sometimes when he sat down to write 
his dearest friends, this impression, with unmiti- 
gated, intolerable severity, so burdened him, that 
he could write on nothing else than the topic of 
his religious woe. This was very naturally the 
case, most frequently in writing to Newton, with 
whom he once enjoyed so many years of brightest, 



220 BURDEN OF DESPAIR. 

sweetest Christian fellowship, ineffably serene and 
delighUiu ; the genuineness, truth, and heavenly 
origin of which, as the work of the Divine Spirit, 
he never for one moment doubted. 

He begins the first letter he wrote to Newton in 
the year 1784, just after the publication of " The 
Task," by saying that he could not indeed tell 
what events might happen in this new year of 
their existence, but that Newton might rest con- 
vinced that be they what they might, not one of 
them could ever come a messenger of good to his 
despairing lost friend. " It is an alleviation of the 
woes even of an unenlightened man, that he can 
wish for death, and indulge a hope at least that 
in death he shall find deliverance. But loaded as 
my life is with despair, I have no such comfort as 
would result from a supposed probability of better 
things to come, were it once ended. Pass through 
whatever difficulties, dangers and afflictions I may, 
I am not a whit the nearer home, unless a dungeon 
may be called so. This is no very agreeable theme ; 
but in so great a dearth of subjects to write upon, 
and especially impressed as I am at this moment 
with a sense of my own condition, I could choose 
no other. The weather is an exact emblem of my 
mind in its present state. A thick fog envelops 
every thing, and at the same time it freezes in- 
tensely. You will tell me that this cold gloom 
will be succeeded by a cheerful spring, and en- 



i 



HABIT OF DESPAIR. 221 

deavor to encourage me to hope for a spiritual 
change resembling it; but it will be lost labor. 
Nature revives again ; but a soul once slain, lives 
no more. The hedge that has been apparently 
dead, is not so ; it will burst into leaf and blossom 
at the appointed time ; but no such time is ap- 
pointed for the stake that stands in it. It is as 
dead as it seems, and will prove itself no dissem- 
bler. The latter end of next month will complete 
a period of eleven years in which I have spoken no 
other language. It is a long time for a man, whose 
eyes were once opened, to spend in darkness ; long 
enough to make despair an inveterate habit ; and 
such it is in me. My friends, I know, expect that 
I shall see yet again. They think it necessary to 
the existence of Divine truth, that he who once 
had possession of it, should never finally lose it. I 
admit the solidity of this reasoning in every case 
but my own. And why not in my own ? For 
causes which to them it appears madness to allege, 
but which rest upon my mind with a weight of 
immovable conviction." 

This letter carries us back for some solution of 
its gloomy mystery to the year 1773, when, after 
some recovery from the more immediate violence 
of the attack, the chaos and dethronement of his 
reason, even in passing away, left upon the air the 
black shadows of an eclipse, that supernatural 
darkness at noonday, that strange disastrous twi- 



222 HOPE ECLIPSED. 

light, in the prevalence of which the birds that 
sing in the day-time retire to their nests, bnt all 
the beasts of the forest begin to creep forth, and 
the young lions roar after their prey. In that 
dread eclipse as to his own personal hope of ac- 
ceptance with God and of eternal mercy, that 
vailing of the light of the Sun of Righteousness, 
Cowper's reason (but not his affections) for the 
most part remained shrouded. Instead of his 
path being, in respect to its brightness and seren- 
ity, in accordance with God's prescribed rule and 
promise, as the path of the just, shining more and 
more unto the perfect day, the perfect clay had 
come first with Cowper, and from that point there 
was a reversal of the rule, so that the shadows 
deepened and the gloom thickened till we lose 
sight of the progress of the saint, in the darkest 
and most impenetrable depths of the valley of 
death-shadows. It was as if he had set out from 
the Celestial City, and taken all Bunyan's vivid 
delineations backward, from the Land Beulah to 
the Valley of Humiliation, and the conflict with 
Apollyon, and the smoke and darkness of that 
other dread valley, which proved to him the River 
of Death, the end of his pilgrimage, the last of his 
gloom and sufferings forever. 

Ever since his attack in 1773, the settled type 
of his derangement had been the obstinate assur- 
ance that his own name was blotted from the 



SUBMISSION, 223 

Book of Life. During that attack, he was at first 
unwilling to enter Newton's door ; but one day 
having been persuaded to make him a visit, he 
suddenly determined there to stay, and accord- 
ingly remained under Newton's care, in Newton's 
family, about eighteen months, when quite as sud- 
denly he came to the determination to return. 
Newton has described his submissiveness to God's 
will in an early period of this attack, in strong and 
affecting language. " In the beginning of his dis- 
order/' says Newton, " when he was more capable 
of conversing than he was sometimes afterward, 
how often have I heard him adore and submit to 
the sovereignty of God, and declare, though in the 
most agonizing and inconceivable distress, that he 
was so perfectly satisfied of the wisdom and recti- 
tude of the Lord's appointments, that if he was 
sure of relieving himself only by stretching out his 
hand, he would not do it, unless he was equally 
sure it was agreeable to His will that he should 
do it." The same spirit of entire submission to 
God's will marked all the changes of his delirium. 
In October he attempted suicide, under the dread- 
ful impression that this was the Divine will made 
known for his obedience. The turn which his 
malady thus took was entirely unexpected, and it 
rendered the most incessant watchfulness abso- 
lutely necessary. That was while Mr. and Mrs. 
Newton were absent in Warwickshire ; but New- 



224 DREAD DELUSION. 

ton has remarked that this very attempt at self- 
destruction was but a new form and proof of his 
dear friend's submission to God's will, "since it 
was solely owing to the power the Enemy had of 
impressing upon his distorted imagination that it 
was the will of God that he should, after the ex- 
ample of Abraham, perform an expressive act of* 
obedience, and offer not a son but himself/' 

That impression always remained by him, or 
rather the belief that he had forfeited God's 
mercy, and shut himself out from hope and heaven 
by not executing the will of Jehovah when it was 
made known to him, and the appointed opportu- 
nity had come. By letting that opportunity pass, 
he thought he had brought upon himself a per- 
petual exclusion from God's favor. For a long 
time he thought that even to implore mercy would 
be just opposing the determinate counsel of God. 
It was a state of mind that increased the anxiety 
of his friends in every recurrence of his disease, 
and tried their care and tenderness to the utter- 
most. In 1787, during the dreadful attack of 
several months' duration, he again attempted his 
own death, and would certainly have accomplished 
it, if Mrs. Unwin had not been providentially di- 
rected to the room where he had just suspended 
himself by the neck, and where he must have died 
in a few moments, had he not been instantly res- 
cued. From this last attack he recovered sud- 



DREAD DELUSION. 225 

denly, without warning, like a man called at a 
word from death to life ; and no similar access 
ever took place, but soon after the year 1790 the 
gloom and dejection of spirits deepened from month 
to month into a thicker darkness and more painful 
distress. 

" Amid these dreadful temptations/' says the 
Rev. Mr. Greatheed, who knew him intimately, 
and after his death published some account of his 
trials, with an interesting review of his life and 
character, " such was his unshaken submission to 
what he imagined to be the Divine pleasure, that 
he was accustomed to say, ' If holding up my fin- 
ger would save me from endless torments, I would 
not do it against the will of God/ He never dared 
to enter a place of worship when invited to do so ; 
he has said, ' Had I the universe, I would give it 
to go with you ; but I dare not do it against the 
will of God V " 

Sad sufferer under a delusion that seemed to set 
the very attributes and commandments of God 
against one another ! We do not wonder that 
Newton and Mrs. Unwin, and his strongest-minded 
and most religious friends spoke of it and regarded 
it as the power of the enemy. With the New Tes- 
tament before them, what could seem a more pal- 
pable . and graphic renewal of those malignant, 
infernal possessions which drew the compassion of 
our Saviour, and required the exercise of His om- 

10* 



226 MERCY IN TRIAL. - 

nipotence. " Whom Satan hath bound, lo, these 
thirteen years !" Justly did they reason and be- 
lieve that something more than a natural power 
was here at work, and that only a supernatural 
interposition could effect a cure. Sad sufferer ! 
yet not so sad as happy, being under the care of 
G-od ; for He was with thee though thou knewest 
it not. When my spirit was overwhelmed within 
me, then Thou knewest my path ! Happy, since 
He who suffered thee to be thus tempted was able 
to save thee to the uttermost, was refining thee for 
greater usefulness, and was preparing for thee, out 
of this exceeding weight of trial, a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory ! 

Now and then Cowper would utter in his letters 
to his friends some sweet impressive sentiments, 
speaking of the sufferings of others, which are ap- 
plicable with peculiar power and beauty to his own 
case. How simple and touching the following 
words in regard to a lovely young person of unob- 
trusive, but genuine Christian grace and worth, 
that had just passed away ! " The world has its 
objects of admiration, and God has objects of his 
love. Those make a noise and perish ; and these 
weep silently for a short season, and then live for- 
ever." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

COWPER's CHRISTIAN GRACES BLOOMING IN MID-WINTER. — DEPTH 
AND REALITY OF HIS PIETY PROVED BY HIS GLOOM. — ASSAULT 
OP COWPER'S ADVERSARY. — INFERNAL CONFLICTS. — INVISIBLE 
GRACE. — COTVPER'S GREAT ENJOYMENT IN POETICAL COMPOSITION. 

It was a painfully vivid image with which Cow- 
per conveyed his mental state, when he said that 
a thick fog enveloped the landscape, and at the 
same time it was freezing intensely. Again and 
again we find ourselves inquiring, how could his 
affections continue so warm, so ardent, so benevo- 
lent, his interest so unabated in every good thing, 
his sympathy for others' woes so tender, and his 
grateful -appreciation of the kindness of others so 
constant, his sensibilities undiminished to the last, 
and his feelings of admiration and love, susceptible 
of new friendships with congenial natures late in 
life ? His power of attraction over others was al- 
most a fascination ; and the frankness and cordial 
sincerity with which he took the new young friends 
to his heart, whom Providence ordained to meet 
and bless him on his lonely way were among the 
most delightful exhibitions of his nature. His own 



228 CHRISTIAN GRACES 

misery never made him misanthropic, but right 
the contrary ; for he was both grateful for his own 
blessings and joyful in the happiness of all around 
him. 

" The principal pleasure, indeed," remarks Mr. 
Greatheed, " that Cowper appeared to be capable 
of receiving, was that which he derived from the 
happiness of others. Instead of being provoked to 
discontent and envy, by contrasting their comforts 
with his own afflictions, there evidently was not a 
benefit which he knew to be enjoyed by others 
which did not afford him sensible satisfaction ; not 
a suffering they endured which did not add to his 
pain. To the happiness of those who were priv- 
ileged with opportunities of showing their esteem 
for him, he was most tenderly alive. The advance- 
ment of the knowledge of Christ in the world at 
large was always near his heart, and whatever con- 
cerned the general welfare of mankind was inter- 
esting to him, secluded as he was from the public, 
and, in common, from religious society. In like 
manner, from his distant retreat he viewed with 
painful sensations the progress of infidelity and of 
sin in every shape. His love to God, though un- 
assisted by a hope of Divine favor, was invariably 
manifested by an abhorrence of every thing he 
thought dishonorable to the Most High, and a de- 
light in all that tended to His glory." 

Unassisted by a hope of the Divine favor ! This 



BLOOMING IN WINTER. 229 

makes the continued development of Cowper's 
piety most wonderful. Here was the bush "burn- 
ing but not consumed. * Here was the faith of 
submission, reverence, and love, glorifying God in 
the fires as truly, and with a martyr's endurance, 
as was ever manifested in the fiery furnace. And 
here was, not less manifestly, a form like unto the 
Son of God, though here His presence was known 
only in the patience and meekness of the sufferer, 
and not in the radiance of a visible shape. Yet it 
was Divine grace, nothing less and nothing else, 
that was shining. And if ever in one case more 
remarkably than in another, John Bunyan's beau- 
tiful imagery presented by his Interpreter was ful- 
filled, it was in Cowper's. " I saw in my dream 
that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, 
and led him into a place where was a fire burning 
against a wall, and one standing by it, always cast- 
ing much water upon it to quench it ; yet did the 
fire burn higher and hotter." On the side where 
the malignant devil is pouring the torrent on the 
soul, you can not see the Lord Jesus pouring in 
the oil of Divine grace ; yet the invisible work is 
the strongest, and the Lord is the conqueror. " I 
will cool you yet," said Satan, "though I take 
seven years to do it ; you are very hot after Mercy 
now, but you shall be cool enough by and by." 
So thought the infernal adversary, when permitted 
to set himself against this child of God, at the 



280 INTERNAL DELUSION. 

very time when his combined piety and genius 
were beginning to put forth those precious blos- 
soms and fruits that were to prove like leaves of 
the tree of life for the healing of the nations. 

And the ingredient he was permitted to mingle 
in that torrent of temptation with which he would 
fain have overwhelmed Cowper, and utterly extin- 
guished the bright fire that was burning, the in- 
gredient with which he hoped to persuade him, as 
he once hoped in regard to Job, to curse God and 
die, was the terrible imagination that he was cut 
off forever from God's favor, that God had forgot- 
ten to be gracious, and that His mercy was clean 
gone for evermore. If he could persuade him to 
despair, he thought he was sure of his victim. For 
we are saved by hope, and the sanctifying power 
of faith acts always with victorious efficacy, only 
through the might of faith's watchword, by the 
earnest of the Spirit in the heart, looking unto 
Jesus, and exclaiming, " Who loved me, and gave 
Himself for me !" And though 

The vital savor of His name 
Restores our fainting breath, 

yet if a personal distrust can be made to take the 
place of confidence in Jesus, 

Such unbelief perverts the same 
To guilt, despair, and death. 



WORK OF T H E TE M P T 1 R , 231 

Now this delusion of Cowper, that he was cut 
off forever from God's mercy, was certainly from 
below, not from above, the work of an Enemy, not 
of a Friend ; yet even the practical power of that 
delusion, and the result on which Satan had relied, 
could be prevented by the omnipotence of God's 
invisible grace. And if Cowper could have been 
carried by the Interpreter to the other side of the 
emblem, to behold the Divine Kedeemer secretly 
but continually pouring in the oil of Divine grace, 
to maintain the heavenly fire, then the secret of 
the mystery of God's dealings with him would 
have been known beforehand. He was bringing 
the blind by a way that they knew not. And if 
Cowper did not know, the angelic guardians — they 
that wait and watch ministering unto them who 
shall be heirs of salvation — must have known God's 
way, as they maintained for him this spiritual con- 
flict, and must have heard the voice saying, " My 
grace is sufficient for thee ; My strength shall 
be made perfect in thy weakness." 

So, said the Interpreter, " by means of the oil of 
Christ's grace, notwithstanding what the devil can 
do, the souls of His people prove gracious still. 
And in that thou sawest that the man stood be- 
hind the wall to maintain the fire, this is to teach 
thee that it is hard for the tempted to see how 
this work of grace is maintained in the soul." And 
hard indeed it was for Cowper to see ; yet still the 



232 SUBMISSION. 

work went on ; and though by the messenger of 
Satan he was not only buffeted, but distressed, 
perplexed, and in despair, yet was he not forsak- 
en ; cast down he was, yet not destroyed ; and 
though seemingly always delivered unto death, 
yet the life that is hid with Christ in God was al- 
ways manifest. He whom it pleased and became 
to make the Captain of his saints perfect through 
suffering, in bringing many sons unto glory, passes 
the children of light also through many scenes of 
trial and of darkness. And Cowper certainly was 
one of those sons brought unto glory in the same 
way. 

Under this extreme severity of discipline; per- 
mitted as Cowper was, to be sifted as wheat by 
Satan, to be driven by the wind and tossed, to be 
distracted with frightful dreams in the night-time, 
and stared at and terrified by a stony-eyed fiend in 
the day-time, the projection and creation of an in- 
ward sullen despair ; permitted to be held in this 
torturing and frightful misapprehension of the Di- 
vine sovereignty in relation to himself, till he be- 
came as a withered and wrinkled goat-skin bottle 
in the smoke, till his very bones became as when 
one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth ; 
yet all the while submissive to the Divine will, and 
in his melancholy misery, unselfish and unrepining 
to the last ; under such discipline there would 
really seem to have been in Cowper's gloomy and 



DESERTION. 233 

despairing experiences more true piety than in 
many persons' confidences and hopes ; for his 
heart was filled all the while with a yearning after 
God and the light of His countenance, as the only 
relief and blessing which his soul desired. If any 
man could ever adopt Watts's energetic stanza as 
the expression of his own feelings, Cowper could ; 

Thy shining grace can cheer 

The prison where I dwell ; 
'Tis Paradise if Thou art here, 

If Thou depart, 'tis hell ! 

He could not he happy without God. He was 
unutterably miserable in the bare imagination that 
God had deserted him. The thought that God 
had forsaken him was more agonizing to him than 
a world of real miseries, temporal and not spiritual, 
ever could have been. But even beneath such a 
nightmare, such an agony, as the supposition of 
this abandonment by his best and only everlasting 
Friend, he would not, knowingly, for the universe, 
have gone in any respect contrary to the will of 
that Friend ; would not have chosen his own way 
in any thing which he might not feel was God's 
chosen way, or which he apprehended was contrary 
to God's will. Now a more convincing and affect- 
ing proof that he was a child of God, though 
walking in darkness, can hardly be imagined than 
this. He could have stayed himself, according to 






234 



ABANDONMENT 



the direction given in the fiftieth chapter of Isaiah 
to those who find themselves walking in darkness 
and without light, upon the name of the Lord ; 
but the terrible point, the unconquerable fatality 
of his delusion was, that the very name of the 
Lord was against him, and that consistency and 
truth on the part of God toward His own attri- 
butes required Cowper' s destruction. We do not 
remember ever to have met with any other precisely 
such case on record ; for Cowper would reason 
himself into a demonstration on this point, and 
sometimes would unwind, to the astonishment and 
compassion of sympathizing friends, a portion of 
the chain of argument by which his soul was thus 
lettered ; he sets the door ajar, and lets you look 
into the darkness of his prison ; and though at the 
same time he sees the light, it is no light for him. 
The atmosphere of Divine mercy is all around him, 
but there is a vacuum also between his soul and 
it, so that, as he conceives, it can not touch him, 
and the congruity of God's attributes forbids that 
it should. 

Water! water ! every where, 
And never a drop to drink! 



The ladder even of Christian experience, Cowper 
once said, has its foot, its lowest rung, in the 
abyss ; and there he had stood, if any step above 
the infernal regions, yet only there, on that lowest 



UNREALITY. 235 

round, amid the smoke and horror of thick dark- 
ness, accustomed only to infernal experiences, for 
thirteen years ! If this had been reality, it had 
been intolerable misery ; if it had been the mid- 
night of absolute despair, it must have produced 
absolute madness. But it was a delusion, and not 
unaccompanied with some suspicions, and some- 
times actual hopes, of its being such, and there- 
fore it could be borne for a season. It had the 
unreality, yet at the same time the despotic op- 
pression, of a vivid dream. 

It was the hallucination of a mind insane on 
one idea, perfectly sound on every other. That 
one was indeed, in this case, a tremendous despot- 
ism, extending over Cowper's everlasting destiny 
(as he imagined) a certainty and immutability of 
woe. If it were a reality, instead of an imagina- 
tion, and felt as a reality, it would leave no inter- 
val for cheerful occupation, it would permit no 
beguilement of its horror, nor forgetfulness of such 
a fate. But it was an imaginary despair ; and 
though the mental dejection, along with the nerv- 
ous derangement which was its physical cause, 
deepened and darkened even to the end, yet the 
misery of an absolute despair never could be in- 
flicted by it, nor ever was endured under it. With 
congenial mental occupation, gentle, tender, sym- 
pathizing friends, and a heart submissive, even in 
its darkest midnight mood, to God's will, Cowper 



236 



PERSONAL INTEREST 



enjoyed much ; though as often as his attention 
reverted to that one point of his insanity, and be- 
came fixed upon it, all his sensibilities seemed 
transfixed and agonized there, and he could see 
and feel nothing but misery. 

Nevertheless, the general tone of his correspond- 
ence, his life, and his writings, up to a very late 
period, was cheerful. " The Task," though writ- 
ten throughout beneath that intensely freezing 
vail of gloom which he describes, is yet a cheerful 
poem ; neither joy nor frost is admitted in it to 
your sensibility or perception. A tender melan- 
choly runs through it indeed ; a pensiveness, deeply 
touching, and sometimes sad, but nothing of gloom. 
There is deep pathos, but yet a heavenly hope. 
Fountains of the purest happiness are opened up 
in it, of which you feel perfectly assured that the 
writer must himself have deeply tasted ; and scenes 
of delight and of sweet, heart-felt enjoyment are 
presented, of which you know that the poet him- 
self must have been a living part. 

Indeed there is not a poem in the English lan- 
guage that carries deeper conviction, or bears more 
indisputable, irresistible evidence of having sprung, 
in every part, from the original experience of the 
author. It is he himself, his own thoughts, feel- 
ings, wishes, manners, habits, tastes, enjoyments, 
present with you, and you can not mistake him for 
a miserable man. He is indeed a man of trials ; 



OF THE TASK. 287 

that is evident ; he has seen affliction, is beneath 
its sacred chastising influence even now, and is, 
like his beloved Master, " a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief." And yet, he is on the 
whole, and in the highest sense, a happy man. 
You can not help feeling that the mind that from 
the treasures of its own experience, and the heart 
that from the fountain of its own emotions, could 
draw forth these rich and beautiful realities and 
forms of sacred thought and feeling, and take de- 
light in their array, must belong not only to a 
heavenly but a happy being. 

And this indeed was the real circle of Cowper's 
existence ; here was his own mansion^ with its 
heavenly furniture and guests ; the other mood of 
his insanity was a separate dark cell, whither his 
heart never entered. His despair was the tyranny 
of a diseased reason ; a compulsion, unnatural and 
strange, upon his whole being ; but his devout 
thoughts, his religious feelings, his submission to 
God's will, his social sympathies, enjoyments, dis- 
interestedness, affectionate and sweet temper, were 
the habit of his disposition, his character, his na- 
ture. Hence in one of his letters to his friend 
Unwin he says that he never wrote any thing at 
second hand in his life ; all the web and woof of 
his poetry was out of his own experience, what he 
had himself thought, felt, believed, meditated, suf- 
fered, enjoyed ; all native, all original. In refer- 



238 



PERSONAL INTEREST. 



ence to his first poetical volume, he said to the 
same friend, " I know there is in the book that 
wisdom which cometh from above, because it was 
from above that I received it. May they receive 
it too ! For whether they drink it out of the cis- 
tern, or whether it falls upon them immediately 
from the clouds, as it did on me, it is all one. It 
is the water of life, which whosoever drinketh shall 
thirst no more." 

Perhaps it may be set down as a ruling distinc- 
tion between imaginary and real despair, that 
whereas the first may co-exist with seasons of 
much cheerfulness, and march together sometimes 
with Laughter holding both his sides, the latter can 
never admit a sportive humor, or give way to the 
influence of playfulness or wit, though it come in 
the most irresistible form ever put on by innocent 
and harmless gayety. Bunyan has drawn a pic- 
ture of the Man of Despair, whose soul you would 
no more dream of enlivening with a sunbeam, or 
winning to the beauty of a smile by merriment or 
jest, than of beguiling the anguish of the lost by 
the harp of David. But in Cowper's mind, Despair 
and "Wit, Melancholy and delightful Humor, went 
hand in hand, weeping and laughing at each other. 
In one and the same letter he would write such a 
description of his gloom and anguish, as would 
make the reader weep with sympathy, or stand in 
solemn awe, profoundly wondering, as before God's 



LETTERS TO NEWTON. 239 

most inscrutable judgments ; and before the close, 
he would give you a thought, an incident, a sen- 
tence, or a melody, of such exquisite and sportive 
pleasantry, that the sight is more original and lovely 
than that of the fragrant flowers that hang blos- 
soming and smiling on the edge of a glacier. 
Thus the two halves of the same letter seem some- 
times the presence or the likeness of two separate 
beings. 

In one of his striking letters to Newton he says, 
" You complain of that crowd of trifling thoughts 
that pester you without ceasing ; but then you 
always have a serious thought standing at the door 
of your imagination, like a justice of peace with 
the riot-act in his hand, ready to read it and dis- 
perse the mob. Here lies the difference between 
you and me. My thoughts are clad in a sober 
livery, for the most part as grave as that of a bish- 
op's servants. They turn too upon spiritual sub- 
jects, but the tallest fellow, and the loudest among 
them all, is he w T ho is continually crying, with a 
loud voice, A ctum est de te ; periisti" This same 
letter he concludes with a series of sportive rhymes 
by way of a message to Mrs. Newton in regard to 
some proposed domestic purchases. 

Cocoa-nut naught, 

Fish too dear, 
None must be bought 

For us that are here. 



240 PLAYFULNESS OF 

Xo lobster on earth, 

That ever I saw, 
To me would be worth 

Sixpence a claw. 
So dear madam wait 

Till fish can be got 
At a reas'nable rate, 

"Whether lobster or not. 
Till the French and the Dutch 

Have quitted the seas, 
A.nd then send as much, 

And as oft as you please. 



, And yet, in another letter to Newton he 
" I wonder that a sportive thought should ever 
knock at the door of my intellect, and still more 
that it should gain admittance. It is as if a harle- 
quin should intrude himself into the gloomy cham- 
ber where a corpse is deposited in state. His antic 
gesticulations would be unseasonable at any rate, 
but more especially so, if they should distort the 
features of the mournful attendants into laughter. 
But the mind, long wearied with the sameness of 
a dull, dreary prospect, will gladly fix its eyes on 
any thing that may make a little variety in its 
contemplations, though it were but a kitten play- 
ing with her tail." 

But here it is to be remarked that in fact what 
renders the humor of Cowper so delightful is, that 
it is neither forced nor boisterous, neither put on 
for effect nor resorted to for provoking laughter 
either in himself or others ; but it is manifestly a 



cowper's humor. 241 

native permeating element, from a deep living sa- 
lient spring in his being ; a vein running through 
the whole empire of his mind and heart like a 
brook in green pastures. The sportive flashes of 
his wit are as native, genuine and playful, as artless 
and unpremeditated, as the serenest expressions of 
his piety are sincere, profound and thoughtful ; 
and both are as spontaneous as the rich droppings 
of a full honey-comb. The playfulness of Cowper, 
not being assumed, but really omnipresent and 
irresistible, had a native sweetness and power that, 
except in the intervals of real, despotic, overwhelm- 
ing insanity, gained the victory over his gloom ; nor 
was he at any time so utterly miserable as he con- 
ceived himself to be. 

Meantime, the lessons of his affliction were never 
forgotten by him ; he felt deeply his dependence 
upon God for every breath of his genius. There 
was this difference, he said, between the generality 
of poets and himself ; " they have been ignorant 
how much they stood indebted to an Almighty 
power for the exercise of those talents they have 
supposed their own ; whereas I know, and know 
most perfectly, and am, perhaps, to be taught it 
to the last, that my power to think, whatever it 
be, and consequently my power to compose, is as 
much as my outward power afforded to me by the 
same hand that makes me in any respect to differ 
from a brute. This lesson, if not constantly incul- 
11 



242 cowper's enjoyment 

cated, might, perhaps, be forgotten, or at least too 
slightly remembered." 

Thus it was that Cowper never wrote with wea- 
riness, never but with pleasure, never except spon- 
taneously ; and this was a great source and secret 
of his success. He said himself that there were 
times when he was no more of a poet than he was 
a mathematician, but at other iimes it seemed as 
easy for him to pour forth the sweetest thoughts 
and feelings, in the sweetest, simplest style, as for 
a child to breathe. He once said to his friend 
Unwin, as also to Lady Hesketh, that he was so 
formed as to be, in regard to pleasure and pain, in 
extremes ; whatever gave him any pleasure gave 
him much ; and he enjoyed much in the work of 
composition. It was an amusement that carried 
him away from himself; or rather it transported 
him from his gloomy self to his radiant and hope- 
ful self under the light of heaven ; from the expe- 
rience of an imagined despair to that region of 
heavenly experience taught of G-od, amid thoughts 
of the richest wisdom, and feelings kindling with 
the theme ; emotions grateful, devout, affection- 
ate, crowding forth from the opened doors of that 
life hid with Christ in God, before which, at other 
times, despair kept such gloomy and forbidding 
watch, that there was no access to it, no commu- 
nion with it. The labor of his authorship on heav- 
enly themes was as the work of those who, passing 



IN COMPOSITION. 243 

through the Valley of Baca, make it a well ; it was 
like Isaac's labor in digging the wells which the 
Philistines in their malignity had rilled and sealed 
up with dirt and stones ; and in its happy result to 
himself, it was as a hand Divine reached down to 
draw him up from an abyss of wretchedness. " The 
quieting and composing effect of it," he told New- 
ton, "was such, andso totally absorbed have I some- 
times been in my rhyming occupation, that neither 
the past nor the future (those themes which to me 
are so fruitful in regret at other times) had any 
longer a share in my contemplation." 

This was just because, in meditating on these 
sweet celestial themes, he had retreated from the 
mob of accusing and despairing tumultuous 
thoughts into that holy of holies, where his life was 
in a double sense hid with Christ in God. He stole 
away gradually, by such delightful occupation, from 
his own despair, and the Enemy found there was 
one secret recess which he could not enter, one 
pavilion where God could hide the troubled wan- 
derer from the strife of tongues, 



CHAPTER XX. 

TENOR OF COWPER'S LIFE AND EMPLOYMENTS. — THE IDLE AND THE 
BUSY MAN. — TRANSLATION OF HOMER. — HIS ACCOUNT OF THIS 
WORK TO NEWTON. 

In the year 1786, Cowper wrote to Lady Hes- 
keth, in reference to his mental malady, a letter 
descriptive of the same, from which we have al- 
ready quoted some passages. " It will be thirteen 
years in little more than a week/' said he, " since 
this malady seized me. Methinks I hear you ask 
— your affection for me will, 1 know, make you 
wish to do so — ' Is it removed ?' I reply, in great 
measure, but not quite. Occasionally I am much 
distressed, but that distress becomes continually 
less frequent, and I think less violent." " In the 
year when I wrote The Task — for it occupied me 
about a year — I was very often most supremely 
unhappy ; and am, under God, indebted in a good 
part to that work for not having been much worse." 
This was written in January, a month, the recur- 
rence of which Cowper always dreaded, for it was 
in that month that his tremendous malady had 



I 



cowper's employments. 245 

seized hhn, and lie feared its periodical return. 
But the style of this letter shows how cheerfully 
he could speak of his malady when he exerted 
himself to view it and describe it from the bright 
side. 

Cowper here says that while writing u The Task" 
he was often supremely unhappy ; it was a period 
in which he was threatened with a second recur- 
rence of his malady in all its force, and he suffered 
indescribably from dejection of spirits. Yet let us 
look from another point of view, and that Cowper's 
own point, chosen by himself in his poem, upon 
the tenor of his life and employments, and we 
shall see the same supremely unhappy person hap- 
pier than thousands whom the world call happy ; 
and even in his own conscious estimation not un- 
favored of his God, nor without deep and constant 
enjoyment. 



How various his employments, whom the world 
Calls idle ; and who justly in return 
Esteems that busy world an idler too ! 
Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen, 
Delightful industry enjoyed at home, 
And Nature in her cultivated trim 
Dressed to his taste, inviting him abroad — 
Can he want occupation, who has these ? 
Will he be idle, who has much to enjoy ? 
Me, therefore, studious of laborious ease, 
Not slothful, happy to deceive the time, 
Not waste it, and aware that human life 
Is but a loan to be repaid with use, 
"When He shall call His debtors to account, 



246 BUSY HOURS. 

Prom whom are all our blessings, business finds 
E'en here ; while sedulous I seek to improve, 
At least neglect not, or leave unemployed, 
The mind he gave me ; driving it, though slack 
Too oft, and much impeded in its work, 
By causes not to be divulged in vain, 
To its just point, the service of mankind. 
He that attends to his interior self, 
That has a heart, and keeps it ; has a mind 
That hungers, and supplies it ; and who seeks 
A social, not a dissipated life, 
Has business ; feels himself engaged to achieve 
No unimportant, though a silent task. 
A life all turbulence and noise may seem 
To him that leads it, wise, and to be praised ; 
But wisdom is a pearl with most success 
Sought in still waters and beneath clear skies. 
He that is ever occupied in storms, 
Or dives not for it, or brings up instead, 
Vainly industrious, a disgraceful prize. 

Now this and similar passages are truly descrip- 
tive of Cowper's own character and pursuits ; and 
while beguiled by such tastes and employments from 
the work of brooding over his own despondency, he 
was by no means so unhappy as he sometimes 
seems, in his letters. " My descriptions/' says he, 
" are all from nature ; not one of them second- 
handed. My delineations of the heart are from my 
own experience ; not one of them borrowed from 
books, or in the least degree conjectural/'' 

Now the possessor of such an experience as 
Cowper frequently delineates can not be called 
unhappy, whatever local, or occasional, or even 
perpetual causes of dejection may weigh upon the 



AND HAPPY HOUBS. 247 

spirits. The pleasure of employment after the 
publication of " The Task/' was speedily transfer- 
red to the translation of Homer's Iliad. This 
was what Cowper himself called a Herculean labor, 
but he felt himself providentially called to it, and 
went through it with astonishing perseverance and 
ease. He began it the 12th of November, 1784. 
Writing in regard to it to Newton, he says, 
" For some weeks after I had finished The Task, 
and sent away the last sheet corrected, I was, 
through necessity, idle, and suffered not a little in 
my spirits for being so. One day, being in such 
distress of mind as was hardly supportable, I took 
up the Iliad, and merely to divert attention, and 
with no more preconception of what I was then 
entering upon, than I have at this moment of what 
I shall be doing these twenty years hence, translated 
the twelve first lines of it. The same necessity 
pressing me again, I had recourse to the same ex- 
pedient, and translated more. Every day bringing 
its occasion for employment with it. every day 
consequently added something to the work ; till at 
last I began to reflect thus : The Iliad and the 
Odyssey together consist of about forty thousand 
verses. To translate these forty thousand verses 
will furnish me with occupation for a considerable 
time. I have already made some progress, and I 
find it a most agreeable amusement." He set 
himself forty lines a day as his work, for a con- 



248 WORK ON HOMER. 

stancy, translating in the morning and transcrib- 
ing in the evening. Sometimes he was very happy. 
" Wonder with me, my beloved cousin/' he writes 
in a letter to Lady Hesketh, " at the goodness of 
God, who, according to Dr. Watts's beautiful 
stanza, — 

* Can clear the darkest skies, 

Can give us day for night, 
Make drops of sacred sorrow rise 

To rivers of delight.' 

As I said once before, so say I again, my heart is 
as light as a bird on the subject of Homer. Nei- 
ther without prayer nor without confidence in the 
providential goodness of God, has that work been 
undertaken or continued. I am not so dim-sighted, 
sad as my spirit is at times, but that I can plainly 
discern His providence going before me in the way. 
Unforeseen, unhoped-for advantages, have sprung 
at His bidding, and a prospect at first cloudy in- 
deed, and discouraging enough, has been continu- 
ally brightening." He had told Newton before, 
that he " had not entered on this work, unconnected 
as it must needs appear with, the interests of the 
cause of God, without the direction of His provi- 
dence, nor altogether unassisted by Him in the 
performance of it. Time will show to what it ul- 
timately tends. I am inclined to believe that it 
has a tendency, to which I myself am, at present, 
perfectly a stranger. Be that as it may, He 



NEWTON'S MESSIAH. 249 

knows my frame, and will consider that I am but 
dust." 

About this time he received from his friend Mr. 
Newton his new work on the Messiah, the acknowl- 
edgment of which was the occasion of a letter from 
Cowper, that reveals more of the depths of his 
spiritual distresses than almost any other passage 
in his writings. He told Newton that Adam's 
own approach to the Tree of Life, after he 
had sinned, was not more effectually prohibited 
by the flaming sword, that turned every way, 
than his to its great Antitype (the Lord Je- 
sus) had been for almost thirteen years, a short 
interval of three or four days, about a twelvemonth 
before, alone excepted. " For what reason it is 
that I am thus long excluded, if I am ever again 
to be admitted, is known to God only. I can say 
but this, that if He is still my Father, His pater- 
nal severity has, toward me, been such that I have 
reason to account it unexampled. For though 
others have suffered desertion, yet few, I believe, for 
so long a time, and perhaps none a desertion ac- 
companied with such experiences. But they have 
this belonging to them, that, as they are not fit for 
recital, being made up merely of infernal ingre- 
dients, so neither are they susceptible of it ; for I 
know no language in which they could be expressed. 
They are as truly things which it is not possible 
for man to utter, as those were which Paul heard 
11* 



250 LETTER TO NEWTON. 

and saw in the third heaven. If the ladder of 
Christian experience reaches, as I suppose it does, 
to the very presence of God, it has nevertheless its 
foot in the abyss. And if Paul stood, as no doubt 
he did, in that experience of his to which I have 
just alluded, on the topmost round of it, I have 
been standing, and still stand, on the lowest, in 
this thirteenth year that has passed since I de- 
scended. In such a situation of mind, encompassed 
by the midnight of absolute despair, and a thou- 
sand times filled with unspeakable horror, I first 
commenced as an author. Distress drove me to 
it, and the impossibility of subsisting without some 
employment still recommends it. 

" I am not, indeed, so perfectly hopeless as I 
was, but I am equally in need of an occupation, 
being often as much and sometimes even more 
worried than ever. I can not amuse myself, as I 
once could, with carpenters' or with gardeners' 
tools, or with squirrels and guinea-pigs. At that 
time I was a child. But since it has pleased Grod, 
whatever else He withholds, to restore to me a man's 
mind, I have put away childish things. Thus far, 
therefore, it is plain that I have not chosen or 
prescribed to myself my own way, but have been 
providentially led to it ; perhaps I might say with 
equal propriety compelled and scourged into it ; for 
certainly, could I have made my choice, or were I 
permitted to make it even now, those hours which 



SUBMISSION. 251 

I spend in poetry, I would spend with God. But 
it is evidently His will that I should spend them 
as I do, because every other way of employing them 
He himself continues to make impossible. If in 
the course of such an occupation, or by inevitable 
consequence of it, either my former connections are 
revived, or new ones occur, these things are as much 
a part of the dispensation as the leading points of 
it themselves. If His purposes in thus directing 
me are gracious, He will take care to prove them 
such in the issue, and in the meantime will pre- 
serve me (for He is as able to do that in one con- 
dition of life as another) from all mistakes in 
conduct that might prove pernicious to myself, or 
give reasonable offense to others. I can say it as 
truly as ever it was spoken, ( Here I am ; let Him 
do with me as seemeth Him good/ " 

Again, at a date not far from the other, 1785, 
he remarks in a similar strain, " Of myself, who 
once had both leaves and fruit, but who now have 
neither, I say nothing, or only this, that when I 
am overwhelmed with despair, I repine at my bar- 
renness, and think it hard to be thus blighted ; 
but when a glimpse of hope breaks in upon me, I 
am contented to be the sapless thing I am, know- 
ing that He who has commanded me to wither, 
can command me to flourish again when he pleases. 
My experiences, however, of this latter kind, are 
rare and transient. The light that reaches me can 



252 CHEERFULNESS. 

not be compared either to that of the sun or of 
the moon. It is a flash in a dark night, during 
which the heavens seem opened only to shut 
again." 

It might be supposed, if this letter were the 
whole ground of our judgment, that at this time 
Cowper was supremely miserable ; but there are 
other letters, close upon the same date, and some 
to Newton himself, showing that it was far other- 
wise. He was greatly animated and cheered just 
then by the prospect of a visit from his beloved 
and accomplished cousin, Lady Hesketh ; and he 
told her that he believed it would be a cordial to 
his nervous system. "Joy of heart," said he, 
" from whatever occasion it may arise, is the best 
of all nervous medicines ; and I should not wonder 
if such a turn given to my spirits should have even 
a lasting effect of the most advantageous kind upon 
them. You must not imagine, neither, that I am 
on the whole in any great degree subject to nerv- 
ous affections. Occasionally I am, and have been 
these many years, much liable to dejection ; but 
at intervals, and sometimes for an interval of 
weeks, no creature would suspect it. For I have 
not that which commonly is a symptom of such a 
case, belonging to me — I mean extraordinary ele- 
vation in the absence of the blue devil. When I 
am in the best health, my tide of animal spright- 
liness flows with great equality, so that I am never 






THE HAPPY TRIO. 253 

at any time exalted in proportion as I am some- 
times depressed. My depression lias a cause, and 
if that cause were to cease, I should be as cheer- 
ful thenceforth, and perhaps forever, as any man 
need be." 

He also wrote to Newton, after Lady Hesketh's 
arrival, that he felt himself " well content to say, 
without any enlargement on the subject, that an 
inquirer after happiness might travel far, and not 
find a happier trio than meet every day either in 
our parlor or in the parlor of the vicarage." It 
was in the vicarage that Lady Hesketh had taken 
up her residence, and in her parlor the trio, so 
happy and so pleasant, met every other day. " I 
will not say," he continues, " that my part of the 
happiness is not occasionally somewhat dashed with 
the sable hue of those notions concerning myself 
and my situation that have occupied, or rather pos- 
sessed me so long ; but, on the other hand, I can 
also affirm that my cousin's affectionate behavior 
to us both, the sweetness of her temper, and the 
sprightliness of her conversation, relieve me in no 
small degree from the presence of them." 

It was much that Cowper could bring himself 
to speak at this time of the forms of his spiritual 
despondency as notions. It was not always from 
such a point of view, or in such a light, that he 
was enabled to regard them. They tyrannized 
over his mind, so that he dared not look them in 



254 A SOUL DESERTED. 

the face, and contradict or question them. They 
possessed him with such a morbid dread and help- 
lessness, that he felt in their presence somewhat 
as he used to do, when a little, timid, trembling 
boy at school, he dared look no higher than the 
shoe-buckles of the older tyrants. At times they 
closed upon him in grim reality. " Yesterday was 
one of my terrible seasons. The grinners at i John 
Gilpin 5 little dream what the author sometimes 
suffers." When again he entered into the cloud, 
it was no longer a notion. 

Speaking of the old dwelling at Olney, after they 
had left it, " Never/' says he, " did I see so forlorn 
and woeful a spectacle. Deserted of its inhabit- 
ants, it seemed as if it could never be dwelt in 
forever. The coldness of it, the dreariness, and 
the dirt, made me think it no unapt resemblance 
of a soul that God has forsaken. While He dwelt 
in it, and manifested Himself there, He could cre- 
ate His own accommodations, and give it occasion- 
ally the appearance of a palace ; but the moment 
He withdraws, and takes with Him all the furni- 
ture and embellishment of His graces, it becomes 
what it was before He entered it — the habitation 
of vermin and the image of desolation. Sometimes 
I envy the living, but not much, or not long ; for 
while they live, as we call it, they too are liable to 
desertion. But the dead who have died in the 



PICTURE OF HIMSELF, 255 

Lord, I envy always ; for they, I take it for 
granted, can be no more forsaken." 

In Cowper's earlier poem of " Betirement," there 
is presented a picture of the melancholy patient 
of " virtuous and faithful Heberden," who was 
Cowper's physician in his first attack of madness ; 
a picture of himself, affectingly true to the life, 
when under the power of his dreadful and un- 
searchable malady. 

Look where he comes ! in this embowered alcove 
Stand close concealed, and see a statue move : 
Lips busy, and eyes fixed, foot falling slow, 
Arms hanging idly down, hands clasped below, 
Interpret to the marking eye distress, 
Such as its symptoms can alone express. 
That tongue is silent now ; that silent tongue 
Could argue once, could jest, or join the song, 
Could give advice, could censure or commend, 
Or charm the sorrows of a drooping friend. 
Renounced alike its office and its sport, 
Its brisker and its graver strains fall short ; 
Both fail beneath a fever's secret sway, 
And like a summer brook are passed away. 
This is a sight for pity to peruse, 
Till she resemble faintly what she views ; 
Till sympathy contract a kindred pain, 
Pierced with the woes that she laments in vain. 
This, of all maladies that man infest, 
Claims most compassion, and receives the least. 
Job felt it, when he groaned beneath the rod, 
And the barb'd arrows of a frowning G-od ; 
And such emollients as his friends could spare, 
Friends such as hisTor modern Jobs prepare. 

Man is a harp, whose chords elude the sight, 
Each yielding harmony, disposed aright ; 
The screws reversed (a task which if He please 



256 PICTURE OF HIMSELF. 

God in a moment executes with ease) 

Ten thousand thousand strings at once go loose, 

Lost, till He tune them, all their power and use. 

Then neither heathy wilds, nor scenes as fair 

As ever recompensed the peasant's care, 

Nor soft declivities with tufted hills, 

Nor view of waters turning busy mills, 

Parks in which Art Preceptress Nature weds, 

Nor gardens interspersed with flowery beds, 

Nor gales that catch the scent of blooming groves, 

And waft it to the mourner as he roves, 

Can call up life into his faded eye, 

That passes all he sees unheeded by. 

No wounds like those a wounded spirit feels, 

No cure for such, till God, who makes them, heals. 

And thou, sad sufferer under nameless ill, 
That yields not to the touch of human skill, 
Improve the kind occasion, understand 
A Father's frown, and kiss His chastening hand. 
To thee the day-spring and the blaze of noon, 
The purple evening and resplendent moon, 
The stars that sprinkled o'er the vault of night 
Seem drops descending in a shower of light, 
Shine not, or undesired and hated shine, 
Seen through the medium of a cloud like thine; 
Tet seek Him, in His favor life is found, 
All bliss beside a shadow or a sound : 
Then heaven eclipsed so long, and this dull earth 
Shall seem to start into a second birth. 
Nature, assuming a more lovely face, 
Borrowing a beauty from the works of grace, 
Shall be despised and overlooked no more, 
Shall fill thee with delights unfelt before, 
Impart to things inanimate a voice, 
And bid her mountains and her hills rejoice. 
The sound shall run along the winding vales, 
And thou enjoy an Eden ere it fails. 

Both the gloom and the gladness of this picture 
were drawn from Cowper's own profound expe- 



j 



THE HEAVENLY CURE, 257 

rience ; he had known the screws reversed, the 
chords jarring in conflict and chaos ; and he had 
known the harp tuned again hy the Maker, and 
yielding a celestial melody. He had known the 
wounded spirit, and the heavenly cure. No poet 
on earth ever descended into such depths, and came 
forth again from them, to sing on earth strains so 
resemhhng those that employ the happy spirits in 
heaven. If the desire of Satan to have and to sift 
as wheat those whom he sees most likely to make 
a breach in his kingdom, were always attended with 
a result so mortifying, one would think he must, 
ere this, have changed his mode of tactics. And, 
indeed, in spiritual as well as temporal things, it 
may be said, 

That Satan now 's grown wiser than of yore, 
And tempts by making rich, not making poor. 

If he can make any one say, " I am rich and in- 
creased with goods, and have need of nothing," he 
is very near the accomplishment of his purposes ; 
but very far from it while he merely succeeds in 
keeping the soul troubled, distressed, and self- 
despairing. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



COWPER'S HAPPY EXPERIENCE. — HIS RELIGIOUS ENJOYMENT OP 
NATURE. — GENIUS AND HUMILITY. — DANGER AND DISCIPLINE. — 
SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN THE FURNACE. — MALADY IN ]78t. 

It was with an eye and heart thus blissfully en- 
lightened that Cowper had been taught to look 
upon Nature ; and inasmuch as he has told us that, 
both in his delineations of Nature and of the hu- 
man heart, he had drawn all from experience, and 
nothing from second-hand, we can not but per- 
sonify the author when we read those exquisite pas- 
sages in " The Task" descriptive of the filial delight 
with which the Christian child and freeman looks 
forth upon the works of God. The poet that could 
write, out of his own experience, the close of the 
fifth book of " The Task," " The Winter Morning 
Walk," and that of the sixth book also, "The 
Winter Walk at Noon," must himself have been 
the happy man, appropriating Nature as his Fa- 
ther's work, must himself have felt the dear, filial 
relationship, the assurance of a Father's love, and 
of a child's inheritance in heaven. Notwith stand- 



THE SPELL BROKEN, 259 

ing the cloudy, fathomless, despairing deeps through 
which his soul, much of the time, had to struggle, 
yet it was he himself that felt compelled to ex- 
claim, when gazing forth into the blue abyss upon 
those starry hosts that navigate a sea that knows 
no storms, My Father made them all ! 

His soul, 
M\ich conversant with heaven, did often hold, 
With those fair ministers of light to man 
That fill the skies nightly with silent pomp, 
Sweet conference. 

There was a morbid, brooding obstinacy in his 
mental malady, a sullen and inveterate self-tor- 
menting ingenuity of argument, and perversenesa 
of conclusion against himself, that held him for a 
while, held him habitually, while he listened to 
himself; but sometimes the spell was broken, 
oftener, indeed, than his black-browed accusers 
suffered him to admit, and he enjoyed with his 
whole heart the opening heavens, and received 
sweet earnest of the presence of his God. 

With animated hopes my soul beholds, 

And many an aching wish, your beamy fires, 

That show like beacons in the blue abyss, 

Ordained to guide the embodied spirit home 

From toilsome life to never-ending rest. 

Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires 

That give assurance of their own success, 

And that, infused from heaven, must thither tend. 

It must have been in the deep consciousness of 
communion with his Maker, in< the profound ex- 



260 



COWPEE ON THE MOUNT 



perience of gratitude, and faith, and love, that he 
wrote those closing lines of the fifth book of " The 
Task." He may have had to go down from the 
mount immediately afterward, to converse with 
suffering and gloom ; but he was on the mount 
then, a mount of transfiguration, and the Lord of 
Nature and of Grace was there, communing with 
him. 






A voice is heard, that mortal ears hear not, 

Till Thou hast touched them ; 'tis the voice of song, 

A loud hosanna sent from all Thy works ; 

"Which he that hears it with a shout repeats, 

And adds his rapture to the general praise. 

In that bless'd moment, Nature throwing wide 

Her vail opaque, discloses with a smile 

The Author of her beauties, who, retired 

Behind His own creation, works unseen 

By the impure, and hears His power denied. 

Thou art the source and center of all minds, 

Thou only point of rest, Eternal Word ! 

From Thee departing, they are lost and rove 

At random, without honor, hope, or peace. 

From Thee is all that soothes the life of man, 

His high endeavor, and his glad success, 

His strength to suffer and his will to serve. 

But Thou bounteous Giver of all good I 

Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the Crown ! 

Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor, 

And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away. 

One may say with perfect truth that if all Cow- 
per's sufferings had taught, or enabled him to write, 
only those two last lines ; yet, teaching him that, 
as his own deep experience, they were well en<- 
dured, they were infinitely precious. Nevertheless, 



AND IN THE VALLEY. 261 

hidden so often and so long from the enjoyment 
of the light he was the means of communicating to 
others, Cowper's case is a most extraordinary illus- 
tration of the grand poetical aphorism, 

" Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, 
Not light them for themselves." 

God will so " seal instruction," according to 
that wondrous revelation of the manner of His 
dealings with those whom He means to save, in 
the thirty-third chapter of the Book of Job, as to 
" hide pride from man." He will seal His most 
precious gifts with the great seal of humility. He 
did so with Cowper. The possession and exercise 
of such surpassing powers of genius would have 
been dangerous and self-pernicious otherwise. 

And therefore perhaps it was, that not Mil he 
was fifty years of age, and not till he had passed 
through a baptism of such suffering in the valley 
of the shadow of death as few men upon earth 
have encountered, did God permit the genius of 
Cowper to unfold itself, and the tide of inevitable 
praise to set in upon him. And even then He so 
disciplined Cowper, as to make him feel as if that 
very genius were rather an external angel, com- 
missioned of God to help him through his suffer- 
ings, than an inward self-possession, which he could 
command and exercise at will. He was naturally 
ambitious of distinction ; what fallen mortal ever 
was not ? and in any period of elevation, when the 



COWPEE ON THE MOUNT 

load of his misery was lightened and his health and 
spirits rose, he found, and felt, and acknowledged 
this tendency, this passion, and knew that he 
needed God's chastising hand. And yet, at the 
same time, when in the depths of spiritual dis- 
tress, he felt as though the very last dregs of that 
passion had been wrung out from him, as though 
the applauses of a world could not affect him, as 
though the Arch-En emy himself could never again 
touch him with that dart. 

There are two extraordinary letters written, the 
one to his friend Newton, the other to Lady Hes- 
keth, both of surpassing interest, but still more 
deeply interesting when compared ; written in 
different states of mind, yet at times very near 
each frther ; which show at once how deeply he 
had been made to understand himself, and yet 
how much less he knew of himself than God knew 
for him ; how clearly in the abyss he could see 
the darkness, yet how soon upon the mount he 
might become insensible to the danger. "God 
knows," he said to Newton in 1785, "that my 
mind having been occupied more than twelve 
years in the contemplation of the most distressing 
subjects, the world, and its opinion of what I write 
is become as unimportant to me as the whistling 
of a bird in a bush." If the world did not approve 
him, he thought that would not trouble him. " And 
as to their commendations, if I should chance to 



AND IN THE VALLEY. 263 

win them. I feel myself equally invulnerable there. 
The view that I have had of myself for many years 
has been so truly humiliating, that I think the 
praises of all mankind could not hurt me. God 
knows that I speak my present sense of the matter 
at least most truly, when I say that the admira- 
tion of creatures like myself seems to me a weapon 
the least dangerous that my worst enemy could 
employ against me. I am fortified against it by 
such solidity of real self-abasement, that I deceive 
myself most egregiously if I do not heartily de- 
spise it. Praise belongeth to God ; and I seem to 
myself to covet it no more than I covet Divine 
honors. Could I assuredly hope that God would 
at last deliver me, I should have reason to thank 
Him for all that I have suffered, were it only for 
the sake of this single fruit of my affliction, that it 
has taught me how much more contemptible I am 
in myself than I ever before suspected, and has re- 
duced my former share of self-knowledge (of which 
at that time I had a tolerably good opinion) to a 
mere nullity in comparison with what I have ac- 
quired since. 

" Self is a subject of inscrutable misery and mis- 
chief, and can never be studied to so much advan- 
tage as in the dark ; for as the bright beams of the 
sun seem to impart a beauty to the foulest objects, 
and can make even a dunghill smile, so the light 
of God's countenance, vouchsafed to a fallen crea- 



264 COWPER ON THE MOUNT 

ture, so sweetens him and softens him for the time, 
that he seems both to others and himself to have 
nothing savage or sordid about him. But the 
heart is a nest of serpents, and will be such while 
it continues to beat. If God cover the mouth of 
that nest with His hand, they are hush and snug ; 
but if He withdraw His hand, the whole family 
lift up their heads and hiss, and are as active and 
venomous as ever. This I always professed to be- 
lieve from the time that I had embraced the truth, 
but never knew it as I do now." 

Here is deep self-knowledge, and yet the ground 
and possibility of self-forgetfulness and self-de- 
ception. Dear, afflicted friend, (Newton might 
have written to him,) may God keep you in 
His hand, safe from the treacherous praises of 
the world, till He take the whole brood and family 
of serpents out of your heart ; for till He does that 
with us, then only are we safe ; and meanwhile 
He will burn them out, with our hearts in the 
hottest crucible, if there be no other way. But 
beware of Peter's word, nor confidently say, even 
in regard to what seems now so worthless to you 
as human applause, It never can hurt me, but 
grant it never may ! 

Nor was even Cowper, with all his tremendous 
gloom and mental suffering, yet out of danger. 
The letter to Lady Hesketh is a frank, sincere 
avowal in an interval of brighter spirits, of the 



AND IN THE VALLEY. 265 

ardent thirst for fame which he knew to be in 
him ; but it seems clear that in the light it did 
not appear quite so glaringly to be one of the brood 
of serpents, hush and snug, as it had done in the 
dark. "lam not ashamed/' he says to his beloved 
cousin, " to confess that having commenced an au- 
thor, I am most abundantly desirous to succeed as 
such. I have (what, perhaps, you little suspect 
me of) in my nature an infinite share of ambition. 
But with it I have at the same time, as you well 
know, an equal share of diffidence. To this com- 
bination of opposite qualities it has been owing, 
that till lately I stole through life without under- 
taking anything, yet always wishing to distinguish 
myself. At last I ventured, ventured too in the 
only path that, at so late a period, was yet open to 
me ; and am determined, if God have not deter- 
mined otherwise, to work my way through the 
obscurity that has been so long my portion, into 
notice. Every thing, therefore, that seems to 
threaten this my favorite purpose with disappoint- 
ment, affects me nearly. I suppose that all ambi- 
tious minds are in the same predicament. He who 
seeks distinction must be sensible of disappoint- 
ment exactly in the same proportion as he desires 
applause. 

" And now, my precious cousin, I have unfolded 
my heart to you in this particular without a speck 
of dissimulation. Some people, and good people, 
12 



266 A NEW ATTACK. 

too, would blame me. But you will not ; and 
they, I think, would blame without just cause. 
We certainly do not honor God when we bury, or 
when we neglect to improve, as far as we may, 
whatever of talent He may have bestowed upon us, 
whether it be little or much. In natural things as 
well as in spiritual, it is a never-failing truth that 
to him who hath, that is, to him who occupies what 
he hath diligently, and so as to increase it, more 
shall be given. Set me down, therefore, my dear, 
for an industrious rhymer, so long as I shall have 
the ability. For in this only way is it possible for 
me, so far as I can see, either to honor God or to 
serve man, or even to serve myself." 

But God, in Cowper's case, would " hide pride 
from man." He still kept him in the furnace, and 
again and again permitted all the waves and bil- 
lows of an almost infernal despair to go over him. 
In 1787, in the dreaded month of January, in the 
midst of his labors on Homer, a severe access of his 
malady prostrated him so completely, that for six 
months he could not put pen to paper. The at- 
tack, he afterward told Newton, could not be of a 
worse kind. It was foreboded by a nervous fever, 
which he told Lady Hesketh was attended with 
much dejection, and kept him during a whole week 
almost sleepless. During this season of almost 
madness, the sight of any face except Mrs. Unwinds 
was to him an insupportable grievance ; even New- 






SUDDEN RECOVERY. 267 

ton could not see him ; and indeed during the 
whole time his mind was laboring under a disbe- 
lief of Newton's personal identity, with a convic- 
tion that for thirteen years he had been correspond- 
ing with him as a friend, under the disagreeable 
suspicion all the while of his being not a friend, 
but a stranger. " Never was the mind of man/' 
said he, in his first letter to Newton announcing his 
recovery, " benighted to the degree that mine has 
been. The storms that have assailed me would 
have overset the faith of every man that ever had 
any; and the very remembrance of them, even 
after they have been long passed by, makes hope 
impossible." From this dreadful condition of mind 
he says that he emerged suddenly, without the 
slightest previous notice of the change, and how 
long it might last they were wholly uncertain. 
However, he soon resumed his correspondence and 
his literary labors, and his health and spirits con- 
tinued for a season to improve. 

There were occasions on which Cowper evidently 
felt himself entirely free from any disorder, a man, 
by the blessing of God, perfectly well, both in- 
wardly and outwardly. For example, he writes to 
his young friend and kinsman Johnson, under date 
of 1791, and speaks of the disorder of his spirits, 
to which he has been all his life subject. " At 
present," says he, " thank God, I am perfectly 
well, both in mind and body." 









268 LABORS ON HOMER. 

Again, in the same year, in a letter to Mrs. King, 
he says, after speaking of his insupportable melan- 
choly, " This is the first day of my complete re- 
covery, the first in which I have perceived no 
symptoms of my terrible malady." 

But such delightful seasons of freedom from 
gloom were transitory ; the malady resumed its 
reign ; and he told Mrs. King that in the depths 
of it he wrote " The Task" and the volume that 
preceded it ; " and in the same deeps I am now 
translating Homer." The industry, resolution, and 
perseverance which it required to struggle on 
through such a work, under such discouragements, 
were by themselves evidences of a very powerful 
mind, not at all unbalanced or weakened by the 
oppressive burden even of despair. The work com- 
pelled him to the utmost closeness of application. 
In one of his letters to Mrs. King he curiously dis- 
closes the perpetual labor, whether at home or 
abroad, in which it had involved him. There was 
not a scrap of paper belonging to him that was 
not scribbled over with blank verse, and on taking 
her letter from a bundle to answer it, he found it 
inscribed with scraps of Homer. He quoted the 
lines, and told her that when he wrote them he was 
rambling at a considerable distance from home. 
Setting one foot on a mole-hill, and placing his hat, 
with the crown upward, on his knee for a writing- 
desk, he laid her letter upon it, and with his pencil 



LUDICROUS COMPARISON. 269 

scribbled the fragment that he might not forget it. 
In this way he had written many and many a pas- 
sage of the work, and carried it home to be incor- 
porated in the translation. 

During these years, most unfortunately thus 
hampered with this great undertaking, he might 
have written many original poems, for he was often 
in the mood for it, but his appointed task would 
not permit it ; he could not take the time. In 
one of his letters to Lady Hesketh he gave her a 
ludicrous heroic comparison, after the manner of 
Homer, to account for his producing so few occa- 
sional poems, and for his withholding the very few 
that he did produce. " A thought sometimes 
strikes me before I rise ; if it runs readily into 
verse, and I can finish it before breakfast, it is well, 
otherwise it dies and is forgotten ; for all the sub- 
sequent hours are devoted to Homer. Fine things, 
indeed, I have few. He who has Homer to tran- 
scribe, may well be contented to do little else. As 
when an ass, being harnessed with ropes to a hand- 
cart, drags with hanging ears his heavy burden, 
neither filling the long-echoing streets with his 
harmonious bray, nor throwing up his heels behind, 
frolicsome and airy, as asses less engaged are wont 
to do ; so I, satisfied to find myself indispensably 
obliged to render into the best possible English 
meter eight-and-forty Greek books, of which the 
two finest poems in the world consist, account it 



270 



ORIGINAL POEMS 






quite sufficient if I may at last achieve that labor, 
and seldom allow myself those pretty little vagaries 
in which I should otherwise delight, and of which, 
if I should live long enough, I intend hereafter to 
enjoy my fill." 

Cowper's fragmentary poem on " Yardley Oak," 
and that on the " Four Ages," are examples of 
what he might have produced, had leisure and 
serenity of mind been vouchsafed ; indeed we may 
say, had his time been at his own disposal, even 
amid all the anxiety and distress that by day and 
by night had become the habit of his being. But 
the sounds of despair, to which he appeared to be 
perpetually listening, seemed not in the least to 
interfere with the play of his original inventive and 
suggestive faculty of genius. They no more pre- 
vented the vigorous exercise of thought and imagi- 
nation in their richest moods, than the thunder of 
the Cataract of Niagara hinders the pine forests 
from waving or the flowers from blossoming, or 
withholds the birds from their melodies, or the grass 
from its greenness. Nay, the pressure of despond- 
ency and gloom seemed to give a solemn grandeur 
and compactness to his trains of thought ; and 
those fragments to which we have referred stand 
like majestic Propylseums, behind which there is 
found indeed no temple, but which irresistibly im- 
press the spectator with the sublimity and vastness 
of the conception that must have filled the mind 



PREVENTED BY HOMER. 271 

of the architect. The " Four Ages/' judging from 
the beginning, would have been a still sublimer 
and more profound poem than " The Task." 
Something the same grand train of thought seems 
to have been commenced as in u Yardley Oak," 
but it breaks off just at the commencement, just 
merely when the impression is left of a mighty 
and glorious region before you, through which you 
are to be conveyed, but as in a dream the power 
quits you, and you fall and wake. Or, as when you 
have been carried to the summit of a mountain, 
and suddenly, instead of the disclosure of a glorious, 
illimitable landscape, an impenetrable ocean of 
mist is rolling before you. 

There must have been a consciousness of these 
powers in Cowper's mind ; he could not have begun 
such poems, and in such a manner begun them, 
without the vivid feeling of what he could accom- 
plish, by the Divine blessing ; and it must have 
been with a deeper feeling of sorrow and disap- 
pointment, or constraint, than at any time he ex- 
presses, that he found himself compelled to turn 
away from such delightful and exciting visions to 
the drudgery of the translator and the commenta- 
tor. And yet, there were no longings of disap- 
pointed ambition ; there was now nothing but sad 
humility and patience, and a mournful longing 
after God. Most affectingly does he refer to his 
condition of supposed banishment from the Divine 



272 



YEARNINGS AFTER GOD. 



favor ; and the mournful grief and desolation of 
his spirit under it were a precious and convincing 
proof to others, though not to himself, that God 
was with him, and that, wake when he might out 
of this dream of darkness, he should find himself 
satisfied with God's likeness in a world of light. 
Cowper's yearnings after God, and his patience and 
submission to the Divine will, were proofs of the 
light of life within him, though he felt it not. It 
is a most blessed promise, " He that followeth Me 
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light 
of life." Cowper always had that, and in the pos- 
session of it was ripening in holiness and advancing 
toward heaven, even when he seemed to himself 
going down to the bottoms of the mountains, in 
a darkness deeper than Jonah's. " The weeds 
were wrapped about my head ; the earth with 
her bars was about me forever ; my soul fainted 
within me." " God knows," exclaimed Cowper, 
" how much rather I would be the obscure tenant 
of a lath-and-plaster cottage, with a lively sense 
of my interest in a Kedeemer, than the most ad- 
mired object of public notice without it. Alas ! 
what is a whole poem, even one of Homer's, com- 
pared with a single aspiration that finds its way 
immediately to God, though clothed in ordinary 
language, or perhaps not articulated at all !" 



CHAPTER XXII. 

REMOVAL FROM OLNEY TO WESTON. — COMPARISON OP COWPER'S 
FEELINGS AT DIFFERENT PERIODS. — TENOR OF SOUTHEY'S COM- 
MENTS UPON COWPER'S EXPERIENCE AND LETTERS. 

Cowper's removal from Olney to Weston, a 
neighboring village much more delightful and 
agreeable, had taken place, happily, before this 
new attack. The change was brought about by 
the friendship and care of Lady Hesketh, who took 
a house at Weston, on the borders of the pleasure- 
grounds of Mr. Throckmorton, and belonging to 
him ; a charming situation, and much more health- 
ful than their confined, damp, inconvenient habi- 
tation at Olney. Thither Cowper and the family 
removed, but they had no sooner become settled 
for a fortnight, than a most severe affliction was 
laid upon them in the sudden illness and death of 
Cowper's dear friend and long and constant corre- 
spondent, Mrs. Unwin's beloved son. The an- 
guish to himself, and the sympathy in Mrs. Un- 
win's sorrow, occasioned by this bereavement, which 
took place in November, may have had some effect 



274 



REMOVAL TO WESTON. 



in hastening the attack of his mental malady, the 
next January. The visit of Lady Hesketh had 
been to him a source of great animation and delight. 
The change of habitation which resulted from it 
was a lasting benefit. Cowper himself thought 
that the nervous fever so oppressive to his spirits 
was much exasperated by the circumstances of his 
abode at Olney. He speaks of the atmosphere 
encumbered with raw vapors, issuing from flooded 
meadows ; " and we in particular," says he, " per- 
haps have fared the worse for sitting so often, and 
sometimes for months, over a cellar filled with 
water. These ills we shall escape in the uplands, 
and as we may reasonably hope, of course, their 
consequences. But as for happiness," says Cowper, 
" he that has once had communion with his Maker 
must be more frantic than ever I was yet, if he can 
dream of finding it at a distance from Him. I no 
more expect happiness at Weston than here, or than 
I should expect it in company with felons and out- 
laws in +he hold of a ballast-lighter. Animal 
spirits, however, have their value, and are especially 
desirable to him who is condemned to carry a bur- 
den which at any rate will tire him, but which, 
without their aid, can not fail to crush him." 

" The dealings of G-od with me are to myself 
utterly unintelligible. I have never met, either in 
books or in conversation, with an experience at all 
similar to my own. More than a twelvemonth has 




WESTON LODGE. 
THE RESIDENCE OF THE LATE «ULMt£ COYVPEK, E,Q. 

Cheever's Cowper. 



\>. 2M 



southey/s comments. 275 

passed since I began to hope that, having walked 
the whole breadth of the bottom of this Eed Sea, 
I was beginning to climb the opposite shore, and 
I prepared to sing the song of Moses. But I have 
been disappointed ; those hopes have been blast- 
ed ; those comforts have been wrested from me. 
I could not be so duped, even by the Arch Enemy 
himself, as to be made to question the divine na- 
ture of them ; but I have been made to believe 
(which you will say is being duped still more) 
that G-od gave them to me in derision, and took 
them away in vengeance. Such, however, is and 
has been my persuasion many a long day, and when 
I shall think on that subject more comfortably, or, 
as you will be inclined to tell me, more rationally 
and scripturally, I know not." 

Yet it is just about this time that Southey un- 
dertakes to say, on account of Cowper' s enjoyment 
of the society of Lady Hesketh, and the tone of 
cheerfulness in his letters, and the absence of any 
marked religious strain, that Cowper was happier 
than he had ever been since the days of his youth ! 
This contains a covert but studied depreciation of 
the brightness and blessedness of Cowper's life in 
the happy years of his early experience in Hun- 
tingdon and Olney, after his conversion. It re- 
minds us of Southey's declaration that the period 
when Cowper was so absorbed in religious duties 
and employments, and enjoyed such close and un- 



276 



SOUTH EYS COMMENT 



interrupted communion with his God and Saviour, 
was " preposterously called the happy period of 
his life." Southey had also remarked, with a 
similar concealed reference, that the summer of 
1781, when the poet, beneath the cloud of spiritual 
gloom, was engaged upon his first poetical volume, 
driven to that work, as he himself said, by mental 
anguish, was the happiest Cowper ever passed. 
Southey even intimated that the tenor of Cowper's 
religious life previously, so absorbed in devotional 
ideas and pursuits, had tended to bring back his 
madness, and was one exasperating cause of the 
access that ensued in 1773. He would persuade 
the reader that it was a perilous and injudicious 
thing in Newton to have engaged his friend in 
such a deeply interesting employment as the com- 
position of the " Olney Hymns ;" and he quotes 
the two affecting stanzas, 

" Where is the blessedness I knew," 



"The peaceful hours I once enjoyed, 
How sweet their memory still ! 
But they have left an aching void 
The world can never fill," 



as a proof of the supposed danger of a return to 
madness ! 

Southey also declared, in reference to Cowper's 
religious life with Newton, that " the course of life 



LETTER TO LADY HESKETH. Z7< 

into which Cowper had been led at Olney, tended 
to alienate him from the friends whom he loved 
best." In this sentence he referred partly to Lady 
Hesketh and her family, whose correspondence with 
Cowper had dropped, apparently because on Cow- 
per's part it was maintained almost solely on relig- 
ious subjects. Southey says that the last letter 
Lady Hesketh received from Cowper, at that time, 
" was in a strain of that melancholy pietism which 
casts a gloom over every thing, and which seems 
at once to chill the intellect and wither the affec- 
tions." That we may know what it is that 
Southey can sneer at as a melancholy pietism, and 
what it is that in his view casts a gloom over hu- 
man life, and chills the intellect and withers the 
affections, we shall quote this interesting and ad- 
mirable letter. It is dated January 30th, 1767, 
and commences — 

" My dear Lady Hesketh : 

"lam glad you spent your summer in a place 
so agreeable to you. As to me, my lot is cast in 
a country where we have neither woods, nor com- 
mons, nor pleasant prospects ; all is flat and in- 
sipid ; in the summer adorned only with blue wil- 
lows, and in the winter covered with a flood. Such 
it is at present : our bridges shaken almost in 
pieces ; our poor willows torn away by the roots, 
and our haycocks almost afloat. Yet even here we 






278 LETTER TO LADY HESKETH. 

are happy ; at least I am so ; and if I have no 
groves with benches conveniently disposed, nor 
commons overgrown with thyme to regale me, 
neither do I want them. You thought to make 
my mouth water at the charms of Taplow, but 
you see you are disappointed. 

" My dear cousin ! I am a living man ; and I 
can never reflect that I am so, without recollect- 
ing at the same time that I have infinite cause of 
thanksgiving and joy. This makes every place 
delightful to me where I can have leisure to medi- 
tate upon those mercies by which I live, and in- 
dulge a vein of gratitude to that gracious God who 
has snatched me like a brand out of the burning. 
"Where had I been, but for His forbearance and 
long-suffering ? — even with those who shall never 
see His face in hope, to whom the name of Jesus, 
by a just judgment of God, is become a torment 
instead of a remedy. Thoughtless and inconsider- 
ate wretch that I was ! I lived as if I had been 
my own creator, and could continue my existence 
to what length and in what state I pleased ; as if 
dissipation was the narrow way which leads to life, 
and a neglect of the blessed God would certainly 
end in the enjoyment of Him. But it pleased the 
Almighty to convince me of my fatal error before 
it indeed became such ; to convince me that in 
communion with Him we may find that happiness 
for which we were created, and that a life without 



LETTER TO LADY HESKETH. 279 

God in the world is a life of trash, and the most 
miserable delusion. Oh, how had my own corrup- 
tions and Satan together blinded and befooled 
me ! I thought the service of my Maker and Ke- 
deemer a tedious and unnecessary labor ; I despised 
those who thought otherwise ; and if they spoke 
of the love of God, I pronounced them madmen. 
As if it were possible to serve and love the Al- 
mighty being too much, with whom we must dwell 
forever, or be forever miserable without Him. 

" Would I were the only one that had ever 
dreamed this dream of folly and wickedness ! but 
the world is filled with such, who furnish a con- 
tinual proof of God's almost unprovokable mercy ; 
who set up for themselves in a spirit of independ- 
ence upon Him who made them, and yet enjoy 
that life by His bounty which they abuse to His 
dishonor. You remember me, my dear cousin, one 
of this trifling and deluded multitude. Great and 
grievous afflictions were applied to awaken me out 
of this deep sleep, and, under the influence of Di- 
vine grace, have, I trust, produced the effect for 
which they were intended. If the way in which I 
had till that time proceeded had been according to 
the word and will of God, God had never interposed 
to change it. That He did is certain ; though 
others may not be so sensible of that interposition, 
yet I am sure of it. To think as I once did, there- 
fore, must be wrong. Whether to think as I now 



280 



LETTER TO LADY HESKETH 





do be right or not, is a question that can only be 
decided by the Word of God ; at least it is capa- 
ble of no other decision till the Great Day deter- 
mine it finally. I see, and see plainly, in every 
page and period of that Word, my former heedless- 
ness and forgetfulness of God condemned. I see a 
life of union and communion with Him inculcated 
and enjoined as an essential requisite. To this, 
therefore, it must be the business of our lives to 
attain, and happy is he who makes the greatest 
progress in it. 

" This is no fable, but it is our life. If we 
stand at the left hand of Christ while we live, we 
shall stand there too in the judgment. The sepa- 
ration must be begun in this world, which in that 
day shall be made forever. My dear cousin ! may 
the Son of God, who shall then assign to each his 
everlasting station, direct and settle all your 
thoughts upon this important subject. Whether 
you must think as I do, or not, is not the ques- 
tion ; but it is indeed an awful question whether 
the Word of God be the rule of our actions, and 
his Spirit the principle by which we act. ( Search 
the Scriptures ; for in them ye believe ye have 
eternal life/ This letter will be Mr. Howe's com- 
panion to London. I wish his company were more 
worthy of him, but it is not fit it should be less. 
I pray God to bless you, and remember you where 



southey's comments. 281 

I never forget those I love. Yours and Sir Thomas's 
affectionate friend, Wm. Cowper." 

If this, in Southey's judgment, be " melancholy 
pietism," what would be his imagination of sin- 
cere piety ? It is melancholy to think that his 
own state of mind was such, that the genuine re- 
ligion in this letter seemed to him to cover life 
with gloom, chilling the intellect and withering 
the affections ! Here, Southey remarks, the cor- 
respondence with Lady Hesketh appears to have 
ceased ; " he could take no pleasure at this time 
in any other strain, and she probably thought that 
it was dangerous for him to dwell constantly upon 
this." Southey may have thought so himself, but 
we would charitably hope that Lady Hesketh did 
not. At this time Cowper's mind was acting in 
the clear light of heaven. Some sixteen years 
afterward the correspondence with Lady Hesketh 
was renewed ; but Cowper's mind being then un- 
der the gloom of a religious despair, he could not 
write upon religious subjects as he had formerly 
done ; on the contrary, he speaks of his former 
zeal as having perhaps proved troublesome to her, 
and assures her that it was no longer his practice 
to force the subject of evangelical truth upon any. 
Southey calls this letter a confession of indiscreet 
zeal, and remarks that it shows what the change 
in Cowper's own religious views had been, noting 



282 



K E L I G I O U S CONVEESATION. 



with pleasure the altered tone, as giving satisfac- 
tory evidence of a saner and much more desirable 
state of mind. Lady Hesketh had written to Cowper, 
informing him that General Cowper himself was 
expecting to visit him, and, it would seem, had 
suggested some hints as to the propriety of avoid- 
ing any such religious conversation as might, in 
Southey's expression, occasion any uncomfortable 
feeling between them. 

If Lady Hesketh had been aware how changed 
a being even a Christian must be, at the different 
poles of hope and despair, she would have had no 
fear of discomfort from the prevalence of religious 
and evangelical themes. So profoundly true is the 
conclusion involved in the prayer of David, " Re- 
store unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and up- 
hold me by Thy free Spirit : then will I teach 
transgressors Thy ways, and sinners shall be con- 
verted unto Thee." When Cowper possessed the 
joy- of God's salvation, he could speak upon that 
theme, and it was the joy and the dictate of his 
heart to do so ; but he could not do it in gloom, 
he could not do it unless God opened his lips. 
" Open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show 
forth Thy praise." In that gloomy and silent 
state Cowper had now remained so many years, 
that it is not strange that his former freedom and 
faithfulness began to appear somewhat over-zealous 
in his own sight. Accordingly he said as much to 



KELIGIOUS CONVERSATION. 283 

Lady Hesketh, to take away all her anxiety about 
his being intrusive on the subject with General 
Cowper. 

" As to the affair of religious conversation," said 
he, " fear me not lest I should trespass upon his 
pea'ce in that way. Your views, my dear, upon the 
subject of a proper conduct in that particular are 
mine also. When I left St. Albans, I left it under 
impressions of the existence of a God, and of the truth 
of Scripture, that I had never felt before. I had un- 
speakable delight in the discovery, and was impa- 
tient to communicate a pleasure to others that I 
found so superior to every thing that bears the 
name. This eagerness of spirit, natural to persons 
newly informed, and the less to be wondered at in 
me, who had just emerged from the horrors of de- 
spair, made me imprudent, and I doubt not 
troublesome to many. Forgetting that I had not 
those blessings at my command, which it is God's 
peculiar prerogative to impart, spiritual light and 
affections, I required in effect of all with whom I 
conversed, that they should see with my eyes ; and 
stood amazed that the Gospel, which with me was 
all in all, should meet with opposition, or should 
occasion disgust in any. But the Gospel could not 
be the word of God if it did not ; for it foretells 
its own reception among men, and describes it as 
exactly such. Good is intended, but harm is done 
too often by the zeal with which I was at that time 



284 



RELIGIOUS CONVERSATION. 



animated. But as in affairs of this life, so in re- 
ligious concerns likewise, experience begets some 
wisdom in all who are not incapable of being 
taught. I do not now, neither have I for a long 
time made it my practice to force the subject of 
evangelical truth on any. I received it not from 
man myself, neither can any man receive it from 
me. God is light, and from Him all light must 
come; to His teaching, therefore, I leave those 
whom I was once so alert to instruct myself. If a 
man ask my opinion, or calls for an account of my 
faith, he shall have it ; otherwise I trouble him 
not. Pulpits for preaching ; and the jparlor, the 
garden, and the walk abroad, for friendly and 
agreeable conversation." 

Now we hardly know of a more melancholy let- 
ter from Cowper in the whole collection of his cor- 
respondence than this. It could not have been 
Cowper's deliberate opinion that the heavenly 
themes of the pulpit are not fit for friendly and 
and agreeable conversation, nor that the tender, 
affectionate, and faithful application of such 
themes may not be made, without any intrusive- 
ness, in private to the conscience. The tone of a 
part of this letter painfully resembles that of 
Southey's own comments. But Cowper, when he 
wrote thus, had long been dwelling in the mere 
twilight of a religious gloom, and not in the enjoy- 
ment of his former sweet religious fervor and hope. 



IRRELIGIOUS CRITICISMS. 285 

From such a disastrous twilight, between the day- 
light and the darkness, he looked back to his form- 
er happy, animated, heavenly state of mind, and 
described it under the false coloring that now fell 
upon it from the habit of his own despair. But 
these were not his views in that joyful period when 
his earnest conversations with his own beloved 
brother were made so eminently the means of 
bringing him also to the knowledge of the truth as 
it is in Jesus ; when his conversation and example 
shed such light and grace also upon the dear circle 
in which he moved in Olney, and when he com- 
posed those hymns, that have been God's manna 
to many a smitten soul in the wilderness, and will 
continue to be sung by the Church of God till time 
shall be no longer. Accordingly, from Cowper in 
gloom and darkness, we would appeal to Cowper 
walking in the light of his Kedeemer's countenance ; 
nay, we may appeal from Cowper's letter, to the 
tenor of his own exquisitely devout and beautiful 
poem on Conversation ; and from the irreligious 
criticisms of the man of literature merely, we 
would appeal to the judgment of a mind impressed 
with the value of the soul, happy in the presence 
of Christ, and alive to a sense of eternal realities. 

Cowper's autobiography was written in the un- 
clouded exercise of his reason, and with all the 
animated fervor and affection of a grateful heart, 
enjoying and praising God. The description of 



286 



IRRELIGIOUS CRITICISMS. 



his experience at St. Alban's, in a letter to Lady 
Hesketh many years afterward, and the review of . 
his ardor, in the letter just quoted, were composed 
"beneath the darkness of his long religious gloom. 
Yet Southey has the hardihood to remark that 
" the different state of mind in which Cowper 
described his malady at Olney to Lady Hesketh, 
from that in which he drew up the dreadful nar- 
rative of his madness in the Temple, and of his 
recovery at St. Albans, might induce, if not a be- 
lief of his perfect restoration, a reasonable hope of 
it. In the former instance (his conversion) he 
fully believed that the happy change which had 
taken place in him was supernatural ; and of this 
both Mr. Newton and Mrs. Unwin were so thor- 
oughly persuaded that many months elapsed after 
the second attack, violent as the access was, be- 
fore they could bring themselves to ask Dr. Cot- 
ton's advice. They thought that the disease w T as 
the work of the Enemy, and that nothing less 
than Omnipotence could free him from it. Means 
they allowed were in general not only lawful but 
expedient ; but his was a peculiar and exempt 
case, in which they were convinced that the Lord 
Jehovah would be alone exalted when the day of 
deliverance was come. Cowper had now learned 
to take a saner view of his own condition/' 

It is painful to read such passages. They in- 
dicate, taken in connection with others, an almost 



PRESENCE OF THE TEMPTER. 287 

malignant hostility against the manifestations of 
Divine grace, or rather against the belief that such 
exercises as Cowper passed through are the work 
of Divine grace in the heart. Southey sneers at 
the supposition of any thing supernatural in Cow- 
per's happy change, and of course much more at 
the idea of there being any thing sw££er-natural, 
any thing of the workings of " the Enemy/' in his 
malady. But there are not wanting passages in 
Cowper's own Utters that look as if his mind were 
sometimes engaged in murky encounters with the 
Prince of Darkness ; and it would be an interesting 
investigation to trace, in such a case, the evidences 
of the possible presence and power of such a 
Tempter. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



COMPARISON OF COWPER'S EARLY SORROWS AND HIS LATE. — HIS 
EARLIEST POETRY. — DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SYMPATHETIC AND 
PERSONAL SUFFERING. — POEM IN THE INSANE ASYLUM COMPARED 
WITH THAT IN THE ASYLUM OF GOD'S GRACE. 



We are approaching now a very sad and gloomy- 
period in Cowper's mental sufferings, when the 
fiends that had tracked his steps, or brushed past 
him with their dragon wings, or stood afar off and 
mocked him, seemed to close with him in a long 
and dreadful conflict. These terrors were real ; 
and one need only compare the groans of a wounded 
spirit wrung out from his soul in these seasons of 
such painful endurance, with the tones of early 
sorrow from disappointed love expressed in the 
verses of his youth, to feel the tremendous differ- 
ence between any mere earthly disappointment or 
grief, and the spiritual despair or darkness that 
separates the soul from God. Yet those early 
poems to the object of his youthful affections were 
beautiful, natural, unambitious, presenting plain 
indications of his genius ; as indeed was the case 



EARLY POEMS. 289 

with, the very earliest of his compositions in poet- 
ical form known to have been preserved and iden- 
fied ; that admirable fragment written at Bath on 
finding the heel of a shoe, in 1748, when he had 
come to the age of seventeen. The characteristics 
of the future poet of " The Task" are there so 
plainly developed, that a page cut from that poem 
itself would not have a more manifest resemblance; 
a very singular phenomenon indeed ; the style, the 
humor, the language, the rhythm, all plainly fore- 
shadowed, and the identity of manner maintained 
through the interval (in his case no small time so 
confused and chaotic) between seventeen and 
fifty. 

In one of his letters he speaks of having written 
ballads at a period as early as the age of fourteen, 
having received a taste for that form of poetry 
from his own father, who himself was the author 
of several pieces. He also tried his hand at some 
of the Elegies of Tibullus ; but none of those pieces 
he could afterward remember or recover. In one 
of his poetical epistles to Miss Theodora Cowper 
in 1755, there occur the following lines, which 
seem to have been written in allusion to the re- 
fusal of her father to grant his sanction for their 
engagement, his reasons for the inflexible determ- 
ination being first, their degree of relationship, 

and second. Cowper's own want of fortune for their 
13 



290 



EARLY POEMS 



maintenance in a style corresponding to their 
family circle and rank. 

Ye who from wealth the ill-grounded title boast 
To claim whatever beauty charms you most ; 
Ye sons of fortune, who consult alone 
Her parent's will, regardless of her own ; 
Know that a love like ours, a generous flame, 
No wealth can purchase, and no power reclaim. 
The soul's affection can be only given 
Free, unextorted, as the grace of heaven. 

One year before this, Cowper's Epistle to his 
friend Lloyd speaks of the fierce banditti of his 
gloomy thoughts led on by spleen ; and beyond 
question the disappointment in regard to his af- 
fections, notwithstanding the consolation of know- 
ing that those affections were returned, inflicted 
upon him no transitory nor trifling sorrow. In 
1759 we trace his easy style in two of the Satires 
of Horace, 

In dear Matt Prior's easy jingle, 

one of them being the humorous description of the 
journey to Brundusium. In 1762, just before the 
painful conflict and complication of distresses in 
regard to his examination for the clerkship, which 
brought on the first insanity, we have a poem ad- 
dressed to Miss Macartney, afterward Mrs. Gre- 
ville, in which occur the following beautiful verses 
in the most perfect manner of many of his later 
minor pieces : 






EARLY POEMS. 291 

'Tis woven in the world's great plan, : 

And fixed by heaven's decree, 
That all the true delights of man 

Should spring from Sympathy. 

'Tis nature bids, and while the laws 

Of nature we retain, 
Our self-approving bosom draws 

A pleasure from its pain. 

Thus grief itself has comforts dear, 

The sordid never know, 
And ecstasy attends the tear, 

"When virtue bids it flow. 

For when it streams from that pure source, 

No bribes the heart can win 
To check, or alter from its course, 

The luxury within. 

Still may my melting bosom cleave 

To sufferings not my own, 
And still the sigh responsive heave 

"Where'er is heard a groan. 

So Pity shall take Virtue's part, 

Her natural ally, 
And fashioning my softened heart, 

Prepare it for the sky. 



Beautiful stanzas, and the sentiments most gen- 
erous and true ! And yet, it was not, after all, in 
this way of discipline, that Cowper's heart was to 
be thoroughly subdued and purified, and prepared 
for a better world. The deepest natural sensibili- 
ties to other's woes may exist, without any sense 
of one's own guilt and misery, and without tending 



292 



STANZAS IN THE ASYLUM. 



to produce such a sense. Nay, the very fact of pity 
taking virtue's part, may delude and delight the 
poor ignorant sinful heart in regard to its own 
state, and make the owner think himself very near 
heaven, even by nature, needing nothing supernat- 
ural to bring him there. The being cut out of the 
olive which is wild by nature, and grafted into the 
True Olive-tree, is declared by Paul to be a pro- 
cess contrary to nature, and not merely above na- 
ture. And it is a process, at least in the first 
stages of cutting out, attended with much pain 
and conflict. 

The very next poem composed by Cowper after 
that from which the preceding verses are quoted, 
exhibits him suddenly plunged from that state of 
quiet in which he could indulge " the luxury of 
sympathy within," to the bottomless depths of a 
personal despair and suffering. It was after his 
first attempt at suicide, and just before his re- 
moval to St. Albans, that Cowper composed the 
following wild and terrible monody of self-con- 
demnation and vengeance. No convicted criminal, 
he said, ever feared death more, or experienced 
more horrible dismay of soul, with conscience scar- 
ing him, and the avenger of blood pursuing him. 



Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion. 
Scarce can endure delay of execution, 
Wait with impatient readiness to seize my 

Soul in a moment. 



MONODY AT ST. ALBANS. 293 

Damn'd below Judas, more abhorred than he was, 
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master ! 
Twice betrayed, Jesus, rue the last delinquent, 

Deems the profanest. 

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me. 
Hell might afford .my miseries a shelter ; 
Therefore hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all 
Bolted against me. 

Hard lot ! encompassed with a thousand dangers ; 
"Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors, 
I 'm called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence 

Worse than Abiram's. 

Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice 

Sent quick and howling to the center headlong. 

I, fed with judgment, in a fleshly tomb am 

Buried above ground. 



Over this Bridge of Sighs, where the smoke and 
flame from the gulf of perdition and despair roll 
and shoot across the pathway, we pass into another 
experience, as if we were transported from the gates 
of hell to the threshold, and the company, and the 
melodies of heaven. The very next efforts of Cow- 
per's genius, and expression of his feelings, con- 
veyed the gratitude and joy of his soul in those 
sacred hymns, for the composition of which these 
mental sufferings and gloom, and the faith in 
Christ by which, through the grace of Christ, he 
emerged from them, were the preparation. The 
second of them we place here in vivid contrast 
with the previous stanzas that were darkening with 



294 



PRAYER AND PRAISE. 



such lurid fire, to note that even the sorrow and 
despair which constituted so much of Cowper's ex- 
perience afterward for many years, breathed rather 
the spirit of that sweet hymn of gratitude and 
grace, than the tones of a tortured conscience, 
without which despair is but a dream ; the spirit 
of submission instead of the sense of retribution, 
characterized his gloom. 

Far from the world, Lord, I flee, 

From strife and tumult far, 
From scenes where Satan wages still 

His most successful war. 

The calm retreat, the silent shade, 

"With prayer and praise agree; 
And seem, by Thy sweet bounty, made 

For those who follow Thee. 

There, if Thy Spirit touch the soul, 

And grace her mean abode, 
Oh, with what peace, and joy, and love, 

She communes with her G-od ! 



There like the nightingale she poura 

Her solitary lays ; 
Nor asks a witness of her song, 

Nor thirsts for human praise. 

Author and guardian of my life, 

Sweet source of light divine, 
And (all harmonious names in one) 

My Saviour, thou art mine 1 

What thanks I owe Thee, and what love, 

A boundless, endless store, 
Shall echo through the realms above, 

When time shall be no more. 



PRAYER AND PRAISE. 295 

Now the great superiority of this exquisite ef- 
fusion over all the previous productions of Cowper, 
can be traced to but just one cause, the regenera- 
tion of his being by the grace of his Redeemer, and 
the baptism of all his faculties in the light of life. 
And before we pursue the deepening of his mental 
gloom till finally the sun of his existence itself 
went down in darkness, we wish to note the infinite 
difference, upon the mind as well as heart, between 
the effect of a troubled and despairing state of the 
conscience, and that of a mere simple destitution 
of hope, under a hallucination such as Cowper 
was afflicted with ; the imagination, not that God 
was angry with him, nor that his sins had not 
been forgiven, nor that his heart was in rebellion 
against God, but that God, from some inexplicable 
necessity in His own attributes, had banished him 
forever from his presence. Cowper's conscience 
was not distressed, but was at peace, and could 
not be otherwise, for his heart was profoundly sub- 
missive to God's will. And passing strange it was 
that these two things could exist together, love and 
despair, submission and the belief of being sen- 
tenced to eternal perdition ; yet they did, and 
Cowper exhibited the marvelous phenomenon of a 
soul enriched with all pious feeling, and exhibiting 
the results of it in the most exquisite productions 
of sanctified genius, yet seemingly in the darkness 
of such despair. But if that despair had been the 



296 



AN ANGKY CONSCIENCE 



fire of an angry conscience, the only exercise of his 
genius would have been the repetition of those 
awful strains of 

Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion! 



The torture and despair of an angry conscience 
are realities that no social pleasantry can relieve, 
nor wit nor affection of sympathizing friends dimin- 
ish. Nor could any of Cowper's literary occupa- 
tions have procured him any intervals of forgetfui- 
ness or peace, if the cause of his suffering had been 
a conscience at war against himself, and a heart 
against his Maker. But with " the heart sprinkled 
from an evil conscience/' and in humble submis- 
sion to the will of God, even the delusions of in- 
sanity sometimes passed before him as a dream, 
and he could enjoy existence in spite of them. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

HIS MOTHER'S PICTURE. — LETTER TO LADY HESKETH. — PLEASANT 
DWELLING- AT WESTON. — LETTERS TO NEWTON. — CHEERFULNESS. 
— COWPER'S DIFFERENT VIEWS OF HIS OWN CONDITION. — STYLE 
OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. — CARE OF MRS. UNWIN. 

The tenderest, most affectionate, and pathetic 
of Cowper's poems were among the last ; as he grew 
older his heart seemed to grow younger, notwith- 
standing the weary melancholy that oppressed 
him. It was not till 1790 that he received the 
gift of his mother's picture from his cousin Mrs. 
Bodham, and the letter in which he acknowledged 
it, is one of the sweetest he ever wrote, as the 
poem in reference to it was one of the most ex- 
quisite expressions of his genius. 

" My dearest Kose, whom I thought withered 

and fallen from the stalk, hut whom I find still 

alive : nothing could give me greater pleasure than 

to know it, and to learn it from yourself. I loved 

you dearly when you were a child, and love you not 

a jot the less for having ceased to be so. Every 

creature that hears any affinity to my mother is 

dear to me, and vou, the daughter of her brother, 
13* 



298 



LETTER ON THE GIFT 






are but one remove distant from her ; I love you, 
therefore, and love you much, both for her sake 
and for your own. The world could not have 
furnished you with a present so acceptable to me 
as the picture which you have so kindly sent me. 
I received it the night before last, and viewed it 
with a trepidation of nerves and spirits somewhat 
akin to what I should have felt, had the dear 
original presented herself to my embraces. I 
kissed it, and hung it where it is the last object 
that I see at night, and of course the first on 
which my eyes open in the morning. She died 
when I had completed my sixth year, yet I re- 
member her well, and am an ocular witness of the 
great fidelity of the copy. I remember, too, a 
multitude of the maternal tendernesses which I 
received from her, and which have endeared her 
memory to me beyond expression. There is in 
me, I believe, more of the Donne than of the 
Cowper, and though I love all of both names, and 
have a thousand reasons to love those of my own 
name, yet I feel the bond of nature draws me 
vehemently to your side. I was thought, in the 
days of my childhood, much to resemble my 
mother, and in my natural temper, of which, at 
the age of fifty-eight, I must be supposed a com- 
petent judge, can trace both her and my late 
uncle, your father. Somewhat of his irritability, 
and a little, I would hope, both of his and of her 



OF HIS mother's picture, 299 

(I know not what to call it, without seeming to 
praise myself, which is not my intention, but in 
speaking to you, I will even speak out, and say) 
good nature. Add to all this, I deal much in 
poetry, as did our venerable ancestor, the dean of 
St. Paul's,* and I think I shall have proved myself 
a Donne at all points. The truth is, that what- 
ever I am, I love you all." 

Cowper wrote also to Mrs. King a few days 
after the letter to his cousin, referring to the same 
picture of Ins mother, and saying : "I remember 
her perfectly, find the picture a strong likeness of 
her, and because her memory has been ever pre- 
cious to me, have written a poem on the receipt 
of it ; a poem which, one excepted, I had more 
pleasure in writing than any that I ever wrote. 
That one was addressed to a lady whom I expect 
in a few minutes to come down to breakfast, and 
who has supplied to me the place of my own 
mother — my own invaluable mother — these six- 
and-twenty years. Some sons may be said to 
have had many fathers, but a plurality of mothers 
is not common." 

This latter poem (the Sonnet to Mrs. Unwin), 
and the lines on his mother's picture, may be 
perused together ; but only Cowper could under- 
stand what himself alone had experienced, the 

* Dr. John Donne, the celebrated divine and poet, born 1573, 
died 1631. 



300 



SONNET TO MA R Y 



similarity and yet the difference between the gush 
of tender emotion with which he penned the one 
and the other. The sonnet to Mary is so perfect 
in its bes>uty that it could not but be universally 
admired ; but the lines to the memory of his 
mother go down as deep into other hearts also, as 
the love that inspired them in the depths of his 
own. 




Mary! I want a lyre with other strings ; 
Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew, 
An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new, 

And undebased by praise of meaner things I 

That ere through age or woe I shed my wings, 
I may record thy worth with honor due, 
In verse as musical as thou art true, 

Verse that immortalizes whom it sings. 
But thou hast little need ; there is a book, 

By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light. 
On which the eyes of G-od not rarely look, 

A chronicle of actions just and bright. 
There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine ; 
And since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine. 












The change from this poem to the lines on his 
mother's picture is manifestly that of deeper feel- 
ing, though both pieces are from the heart. 

ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE. 

Oh that those lips had language ! Life has pass'd 
"With me but roughly since I heard thee last. 
Those lips are thine — thine own sweet smile I see, 
The same that oft in childhood solaced me ; 
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say, 
" Grieve not. my child, chase all thy fears awnv {" 



his mother's picture. 301 

The meek intelligence of those dear eyes 
(Blest be the art that can immortalize, 
The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim 
To quench it) here shines on me still the same. 
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear, 

welcome guest, though unexpected here! 
"Who bidst me honor with an artless song, 
Affectionate, a mother lost so long. 

1 will obey, not willingly alone, 

But gladly, as the precept were her own : 
And, while that face renews my filial grief, 
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief, 
Shall steep me in Elysian reverie, 
A momentary dream, that thou art she. 

My mother ! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, 
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
"Wretch even then, life's journey just begun ? 
Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss ; 
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss — 
Ah, that maternal smile ! it answers — Yes. 
I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day, 
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, 
And, turning from my nursery window, drew 
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! 
But was it such? — It was. — Where thou art gone 
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, 
The parting word shall pass my lips no more ! 
Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern, 
Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. 
"What ardently I wish'd, I long believed, 
And, disappointed still, was still deceived. 
By expectation every day beguiled, 
Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. 
Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, 
Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent, 
I learn'd at last submission to my lot, 
But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot. 

Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more. 
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor. 



302 



HIS MOTHERS PICTURE, 






And where the gardener Kobin, day by day, 

Drew me to school along the public way, 

Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapp'd 

In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet-capp'd, 

'Tis now become a history little known, 

That once we call'd the pastoral house our own. 

Short-lived possession ! but the record fair, 

That memory keeps of all thy kindness there, 

Still outlives many a storm, that has effaced 

A thousand other themes less deeply traced. 

Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, 

That thou mightst know me safe and warmly laid ; 

Thy morning bounties ere I left my home, 

The biscuit, or confectionary plum ; 

The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestow'd 

By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd : 

All this, and more endearing still than all, 

Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall, 

Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks, 

That humor interposed too often makes ; 

All this still legible in memory's page, 

And still to be so to my latest age, 

Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay 

Such honors to thee as my numbers may; 

Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, 

Not scorn'd in Heaven, though little noticed here. 

Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours, 
"When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers, 
The violet, the pink, and jessamine, 
I prick'd them into paper with a pin, 
(And thou wast happier than myself the while, 
Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head, and smile); 
Could those few pleasant days again appear, 
Might one wish bring them, would I wish them here ? 
I would not trust my heart — the dear delight 
Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might. — 
But no — what here we call our life is such, 
So little to be loved, and thou so much, 
That I should ill requite thee to constrain 
Thy unbound spirit into bonds again. 









his mother's picture. 303 

Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast 
(The storms all weather'd and the ocean cross'd) 
Shoots into port at some well-haven'd isle, 
Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile, 
There sits quiescent on the floods, that show 
Her beauteous form reflected clear below, 
While airs impregnated with incense play 
Around her, fanning light her streamers gay ; 
So thou, with sails how swift ! hast reach'd the shore, 
"Where tempests never beat nor billows roar;"* 
And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide 
Of life long since has anchor'd by thy side. 
But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest, 
Always from port withheld, always distress'd — 
Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest-toss'd, 
Sails ripp'd, seams opening wide, and compass lost, 
And day by day some current's thwarting force 
Sets me more distant from a prosperous course. 
But oh, the thought, that thou art safe, and hel 
That thought is joy, arrive what may to me. 
My boast is not that I deduce my birth 
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth ; 
But higher far my proud pretensions rise — 
The son of parents pass'd into the skies. 
And now, farewell — Time unrevoked has run 
His wonted course, yet what I wish'd is done. 
By contemplation's help, not sought in vain, 
I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again ; 
To have renew'd the joys that once were mine, 
Without the sin of violating thine ; 
And, while the wings of fancy still are free, 
And I can view this mimic show of thee, 
Time has but half succeeded in his theft — 
Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left. 

The unequaled tenderness and pathos of this 
poem, and the universal experience of the sweet- 
ness and preciousness of a mother's love, by which 

* Garth. 



304 PROVIDENTIAL MERCY. 

all hearts answer to its exquisite touches, have 
rendered it perhaps the best appreciated and ad- 
mired of all Cowper's productions. The note of 
his own sorrow is here, as every where, the same, 
"scarce hoping to attain that rest/' to which 
nevertheless with undeviating constancy of desire 
his heart was always turned. He might have 
been answered, in the beantiful language of his 
own consoling lines to a much afflicted child of 
God: 

Ah ! be not sad ! although thy lot be cast 
Far from the flock, and in a boundless waste I 
ISTo shepherd's tents within thy view appear, 
But the chief Shepherd even there is near ; 
Thy tender sorrows, and thy plaintive strain, 
Plow in a foreign land, but not in vain ; 
Thy tears all issue from a source divine, 
And every drop bespeaks a Saviour thine ! 

"Writing to Lady Hesketh, with a desire to 
make every thing in his situation and experience 
appear as pleasantly to her as he could consci- 
entiously describe it, Cowper says : " He who hath 
preserved me hitherto, will still preserve me. All 
the dangers that I have escaped are so many 
pillars of remembrance, to which I shall hereafter 
look back with comfort, and be able, as I well 
hope, to inscribe on every one of them a grateful 
memorial of God's singular protection of me. 
Mine has been a life of wonders for many years, 
and a life of wonders I in mv heart believe it will 



PROVIDENTIAL MERCY. 305 

be to the end. Wonders I have seen in the great 
deeps, and wonders I shall see in the paths of 
mercy also. This, my dear, is my creed/' 

But this is neither the creed nor the language, 
and these are not the feelings, either of hopeless- 
ness or despair, but of faith, and hope, and ador- 
ing gratitude and love. And while Cowper could 
write thus, he was gaining, by grace, a transitory 
victory, full of promise, although so transitory, 
over the soul's great Enemy, and his own habitual 
gloom. 

It was by one of the paths of mercy in the 
Divine Providence that Cowper was led to change 
the place of his residence from Olney to Weston. 
This removal to a new and delightful abode was 
accomplished in 1786 through Lady Hesketh's 
affectionate perseverance and energy. The house 
at Olney had been always unfavorable to the 
health of its inmates. Cowper speaks of having 
been confined for years by the combination of 
locality and climate, from September to March, 
and sometimes longer. Besides the raw vapors 
issuing from flooded meadows, and the sitting- 
room, sometimes for months, over a cellar filled 
with water Cowper said also that a gravel walk, 
thirty yards long, was all the open space he had 
to move in for eight months in the year, during 
thirteen years of such imprisonment. 

Their walks and space for exercise from April 



EXQUISITE PICTURE. 

to August were, however, delightful, and so was 
Cowper's own workshop, as he called it, in the 
garden. Take, for example, the following ex- 
quisite picture. " I am writing in it now. It is 
the place in which I fabricate all my verse in 
summer time. The grass under my windows is 
all bespangled with dew-drops, and the birds are 
singing in the apple-trees among the blossoms. 
Never poet had a more commodious oratory in 
which to invoke his muse. 

"We took our customary walk yesterday in the 
wilderness at Weston, and saw with regret the 
laburnums, syringas, and guelder-roses, some of 
them blown, and others just upon the point of 
blowing, and could not help observing, ' all these 
will be gone before Lady Hesketh comes !' Still, 
however, there will be roses, and jasmine, and honey- 
suckle, and shady walks, and cool alcoves, and you 
will partake of them with us. But I want you to 
have a share of every thing that is delightful 
here, and can not bear that the advance of the 
season should steal away a single pleasure before 
you can come to enjoy it." 

Mr. Unwin was shocked when he first saw the 
house in which his mother and Cowper dwelt so 
long in Olney. It looked to him like a prison, and 
Cowper told him afterward that his view of it 
was not only just but prophetic. Nevertheless, 
some very happy years were spent there, and the 






A JUST DELIVERY. 307 

quiet and sweetness, the refinement, purity, and 
piety of the domestic circle threw around it an air 
of beauty. When they first thought of the resi- 
dence at Weston, then the discomforts of the 
house at Olney came suddenly into view. Cowper 
told Mr. Unwin that " it not only had the aspect 
of a place built for the purpose of incarceration, 
but had actually served that purpose through a 
long, long period, and they had been the prisoners. 
But a jail-delivery is at hand. The bolts and 
bars are to be loosed, and we shall escape. Both 
your mother's constitution and mine have suffered 
materially by such close and long confinement, 
and it is high time, unless we intend to retreat 
into the grave, that we should seek out a more 
wholesome residence." He told Mr. Newton, on 
the same occasion, that "a fever of the slow-and- 
spirit-oppressing kind seemed to belong to all, ex- 
cept the natives, who had dwelt in Olney many 
years ;" and he thought that both Mrs. Unwin 
and himself owed their respective maladies to the 
local causes that have been enumerated. 

In thus speaking, Cowper did not refer to the 
burden of his despair, which he never attributed 
to physical disease, however much he might be 
willing to admit that it was exasperated by his 
nervous fevers. Neither the physical nor the mental 
derangement were produced by the marshes of 
Olney, for both had been developed in his system 



308 



EARLIEST DEJECTION, 



as early as his residence at London in the Temple. 
There, at the age of twenty-one, in 1752, he was 
" struck with such a dejection of spirits as none 
but they who have felt the same, can have the 
least conception of. Day and night/' he says, " I 
was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and 
rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish 
for those studies to which I had before been 
closely attached ; the classics had no longer any 
charms for me ; I had need of something more 
salutary than amusement, but I had no one to 
direct me where to find it." 

It was after his removal to Weston that the 
third attack of his mental malady occurred ; and 
the recovery from it (as has been noted) was as. 
sudden as the attack. In reviewing it, he spoke 
of " those jarrings that made his skull feel like a 
broken egg-shell." There were causes both of 
physical and mental disease in his system, which 
would doubtless have been developed, had his 
residence from the outset been in Weston, or any 
other part of the kingdom, during the whole 
twenty-five years since his departure from St. 
Albans ; but they might have been much re- 
pressed and modified, and perhaps at length 
nearly removed or conquered, had his manner of 
life been more active, and his home more favorable 
to health. But neither physical nervous derange- 
ment, nor local miasma aggravating its power, 



SPIRITUAL ADVERSARIES. 309 

nor mistakes in the manner of its treatment, can 
prove that there were no assaults from malignant 
spiritual adversaries. It is declared by divine in- 
spiration to be the work of the god of this world 
to blind the minds of those that believe not, lest 
the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ should 
be received by them. It may be equally his work 
to produce delusion in the minds of those that be- 
lieve, if he can by that means turn them astray, 
or diminish or destroy their usefulness. But Cow- 
per was in the hands of God, not Satan, and thus 
'far the Tempter might go, and no further than 
just to reveal the more brightly the wonderful 
grace of God. A thread of divine providence, 
Cowper was wont to say, ran through his whole 
life, and he could trace divine interposition in 
every part of it ; but he felt that he could also 
trace the malignant interference of opposing pow- 
ers. Who can say that he and Newton were mis- 
taken ? 

Some of Cowper's letters to Mrs. King contain 
interesting and illustrative references to his own 
case, and his own opinion in regard to it. He told 
her that he was a strange creature, with singulari- 
ties that would fill her with wonder if she knew 
them. u I will add, however," says he, "injust- 
ice to myself, that they would not lower me in 
your good opinion ; though perhaps they might 
tempt you to question the soundness of my upper 



310 



INTEBCESSORY PRAYER. 



story. Almost twenty years have I been thus 
unhappily circumstanced ; and the remedy is in 
the hand of God only." He then says that all 
this unhappiness may vanish in a moment, and if 
it please God it shall. " In the mean time, my 
dear madam, remember me in your prayers, and 
mention me at those times as one whom it has 
pleased God to afflict with singular visitations/' 

This was in 1790, and at this time he not only 
besought the prayers of dear Christian friends for 
himself in his affliction, but was in the habit of 
commending them also to God in like manner at 
the throne of grace, when he heard of their dis- 
tresses. This is evident from a letter to Newton 
on the declining health of his wife. Cowper closes 
it, " commending you and Mrs. Newton, with all 
the little power I have of that sort, to His fatherly 
and tender care in whom you have both believed, 
in which friendly office I am fervently joined by 
Mrs. Unwin." 

In this same letter he says : " Twice, as you 
know, I have been overwhelmed with the blackest 
despair ; and at those times every thing on which 
I have been at any period of my life concerned, 
has afforded to the Enemy a handle against me. 
I tremble, therefore, almost at every step I take, 
lest on some future similar occasion it should 
yield him opportunity, and furnish him with means 
to torment me." He said this, in reference to the 



SINCERITY OF MIND. 311 

question of resorting to magnetism, which had 
been proposed by Newton, as an experiment which 
it might be well to try in Cowper's case ; but he 
had " a thousand doubts," and it was not thought 
best to attempt it. 

"I could not sing the Lord's song/' said Cow- 
per, "were it to save my life, banished as I am, 
not toa strange land, but to a remoteness from 
His presence, in comparison with which the dis- 
tance from east to west is no distance, is vicinity 
and cohesion. I dare not, either in prose or verse, 
allow myself to express a frame of mind which I 
am conscious does not belong to me ; least of all 
can I venture to use the language of absolute res- 
ignation, lest, only counterfeiting, I should, for 
that very reason, be taken strictly at my word, and 
lose all my remaining comfort/' 

This was written in 1788 to his friend, Mr. Bull, 
in answer to a request for some hymns from Cowper, 
or a proposition that he would employ his powers 
again in that kind of composition. " Ask possi- 
bilities, and they shall be performed," said Cow- 
per ; " but ask not hymns from a man suffering 
from despair as I do." But when Cowper speaks 
of his remaining comfort, it is plain that he is not, 
and does not regard himself as being, a prey to 
absolute despair. He has some comfort, and is 
fearful of any step that might deprive him of it. 
It was only two years and a half before this date 



312 TERROR OF JANUARY. 

that Oowper began the renewal of his correspond- 
ence with Lady Hesketh. 

Cowper lived in terror of the month of January, 
because it was the season in which he had been 
twice prostrated by the dreadful mental malady 
which had covered his life with gloom. He ad- 
vanced toward the month, he told Newton, with 
a dread not to be imagined. He said he knew 
better than to be mastered by such terrors, for he 
knew that both he and the months were in the 
hand of God, and that one month was as danger- 
ous as another, unless guarded by Him, whether 
in midsummer, at noonday, and in the clear sun- 
shine, or at midnight and in midwinter ; but he 
could not help it, could not avail himself of his 
knowledge. " I have heard of bodily aches and 
ails that have been particularly troublesome when 
the season returned in which the hurt that occa- 
sioned them was received. The mind, I believe 
(with my own, however, I am sure it is so), is 
liable to similar periodical affections." When the 
dreaded month was past, he was " thankful to the 
Sovereign Dispenser both of health and sickness, 
who, though he had had such cause to tremble, 
gave him encouragement to hope that he might 
dismiss his fears." 

In the intervals, and in the anticipation of an 
event to which he looked forward with delight, 
such as the visit from his beloved cousin Lady 



TEARS AND HOPES. 813 

Hesketh, he could give a most cheerful, and, on 
the whole, a most sincerely cheerful description of 
himself. Then again it was a mixture of de- 
spondency and hope. " My health and spirits 
seem to be mending daily. To what end I know 
not, neither will conjecture, but endeavor, so far as 
I can, to be content that they do so. • * * But 
years will have their course and their effects ; they 
are happiest, so far as this life is concerned, who 
do not grow old before their time. Trouble and 
anguish do that for some which only longevity 
does for others. A few months since I was older 
than your father is now, and though I have lately 
recovered, as FalstafY says, some smatch of my 
youth, I have but little confidence, in truth, none, 
in so flattering a change, but expect, when I least 
expect it, to wither again." 

His repeated experience of sudden attacks and 
as sudden restorations induced him at length to 
conclude that this was the appointed and peculiar 
style of God's providence in regard to him, and 
that it would last to the end ; and, moreover, that 
he might be restored to perfect light and peace 
and blessedness at a moment when he least ex- 
pected it. All this was realized ; but the end, not 
till he entered on the glory of a better world. 
The infinite amazement and ecstasy of his spirit, 
when released from its prison, and, in the language 
of Yo.\\\ found in Christ, at his appearing and in 
14* 



314 STYLE OF PROVIDENCE. 

his kingdom, can be thought upon in silence, but 
not shadowed forth in words. It was only an ex- 
ercise of power and grace by the Lord of Life and 
Glory, greater than in the case of Lazarus, that 
could say, Loose him, and let him go ! 

"There is," says Cowper, "a certain style of 
dispensations maintained by Providence in the 
dealings of God with every man, which, however 
the incidents of his life may vary, and though he 
may be thrown into many different situations, is 
never exchanged for another. The style of dis- 
pensation peculiar to myself has hitherto been 
that of sudden, violent, unlooked-for change. 
When I have thought myself falling into the 
abyss, I have been caught up again ; when I have 
thought myself on the threshold of a happy eter- 
nity, I have been thrust down to hell. The 
rough and the smooth of such a lot, taken to- 
gether, should perhaps have taught me never to 
despair ; but through an unhappy propensity in 
my nature to forbode the worst, they have on the 
contrary operated as an admonition to me never to 
hope. A firm persuasion that I can never durably 
enjoy a comfortable state of mind, but must be 
depressed in proportion as I have been elevated, 
withers my joys in the bud, and in a manner en- 
tombs them before they are born, for I have no 
expectation but of sad vicissitude, and ever believe 
that the last shock of all will be fatal." 



LETTEKS TO NEWTON. 315 

This was to Newton, in 1788, just after Cowper 
had enjoyed a visit from that dear and experienced 
friend, who knew his sorrows better than any other 
man living. Cowper had found those comforts, 
which had formerly sweetened all their interviews, 
in part restored. He knew him, he said, for the 
same shepherd who was sent to lead him out of 
the wilderness into the pasture where the chief 
Shepherd feeds His flock, and felt his sentiments 
of affectionate friendship for him the same as 
ever. But one thing, he said, was wanting, and 
that thing the crown of all ; referring to a per- 
sonal assurance of redemption in Christ. " I shall 
find it in God's time, if it be not lost forever. 
When I say this, I say it trembling ; for at what 
time soever comfort shall come, it will not come 
without its attendant evil." 

Two years later, in October, 1790, in a very 
beautiful letter to the same dear friend, Cowper 
speaks of the sense one has, in a rural situation, 
of the rapidity with which time flies. The show- 
ers of Autumn leaves were falling from the trees 
around him, and reminded him of the shortness 
of his existence here. There was a time, he says, 
when he thought of this with pleasure, and even 
" numbered the seasons as they passed in swift 
rotation, as a school-boy numbers the days that 
interpose between the next vacation, when he 
shall see his parents and enjoy his home." But 



316 LETTEPwS TO NEWTON. 

under the long continuance and deepening of his 
religious gloom, the absence of all hope, and the 
prevalence of the imaginary assurance that he was 
to be banished from God forever, had made him 
look upon the shortness and the close of life with 
regret, though the consideration was once so grate- 
ful to him. He says he had become such another 
wretch as Msecenas was, who wished for long life, 
he cared not at what expense of sufferings. 

" The only consolation left me on this subject 
is, that the voice of the Almighty can in one mo- 
ment cure me of this mental infirmity. That He 
can, I know by experience ; and there are reasons 
for which I ought to believe that He will. But 
from hope to despair is a transition that I have 
made so often that I can only consider the hope 
that may come, and that sometimes I believe will, 
as a short prelude of joy to a miserable conclusion 
of sorrow that shall never end. Thus are my 
brightest prospects clouded, and thus to me is 
hope itself become like a withered flower that has 
lost both its hue and its fragrance." 

The language and the imagery in these extracts 
are very affecting ; yet the whole passages are 
proofs of what we have intimated, that Cowper's 
despair was not at any time absolute, but in gen- 
eral a singular and trembling mixture of fear and 
hope, so that he could seriously and soberly speak 
of the gloom as a mental infirmity, which God 



LETTERS TO NEWTON. 317 

could dissipate, and of the idea of his certain per- 
dition as a notion, which the Redeemer could dis- 
possess from his mind at any moment. If his 
hope was like a withered flower, still he kept it as 
one treasures up a flower given by a very dear 
friend between the leaves of a very precious book, 
and though the flower is dry, yet the heart that 
loves the giver is not, but retains the same affec- 
tion and esteem as ever. For even so did Cowper 
love and adore an unseen Saviour, and this de- 
lightful fact was sometimes singularly asserted in 
his dreams, when he would not have admitted it 
in his hours of wakeful despondency ; as in that 
instance to which we shall have occasion to refer, 
when he found himself exclaiming, " I love Thee, 
even now, more than many who see Thee daily !" 

In connection with these letters to Newton in 
regard to his visit, how beautiful are the stanzas 
of poetry in which Cowper had sent him an invi- 
tation in the Spring. The piece closes with these 
three verses : 



Old Winter, halting o'er the mead, 
Bids me and Mary mourn ; 

But lovely Spring peeps o'er his head, 
And whispers your return. 

Then April, with her sister May, 
Shall chase him from the bowers, 

And weave fresh garlands every day, 
To crown the smiling hours. 



318 LETTERS TO NEWTON. 

And if a tear that speaks regret 

Of happier times appear, 
A glimpse of joy that we have met 

Shall shine, and dry the tear. 

These letters are still more striking, from the 
fact that even while writing them, Cowper was in 
the enjoyment of good health, and at the date of 
the last more than usually happy and cheerful in 
the family circle, Lady Hesketh being at that time 
a member of it. Cowper apologizes for the " dis- 
mal strain" in which he has written, and then 
says : " Adieu, my dear friend: We are well ; 
and notwithstanding all that I have said, I am 
myself as cheerful as usual. Lady Hesketh is 
here, and in her company even I, except now and 
then for a moment, forget my sorrows/' 

Certainly it can not be the gloom of despair, 
when the presence of a beloved friend can so effect- 
ually dispel the sorrow as to make it forgotten for 
days together, except now and then for a moment. 
Cowper had acquired, in the long comparative 
loneliness of his state, the habit of brooding over 
his gloom, and if a cheerful, affectionate, and happy 
spirit like Lady Hesketh's could always have been 
with him, and especially, to separate him from the 
charge of a perpetual anxious watchfulness over 
the declining health and faculties of his dear 
Mary, the result would have been very different. 
His mind and heart were in no condition to endure 



DARKENING HOURS. 319 

"the dreadful post of observation darkening every 
hour ;" and it was a terrible complication of in- 
ward gloom and images of despair, with such a re- 
ality of external distress answering to them, when 
the deplorable condition of his dearest friend 
came to be the subject of incessant care and con- 
templation. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



THE YEAR 1791. — FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN HAYLEY AND COWPER. — 
HAYLEY'S VISIT TO WESTON, AND COWPER'S TO EARTHAM. — ILL- 
NESS OF MRS. UNWIN. — ENGAGEMENT ON MILTON. 



In 1791 the interesting friendship between Hay- 
ley and Cowper commenced, with a frequent and 
affectionate correspondence by letter. Hayley then 
visited Cowper at Weston, and during the month 
of his visit, was enabled to calm and comfort his 
friend beneath the shock which the whole family 
sustained in an attack of paralysis with which 
Mrs. Unwin was most suddenly and unexpectedly 
afflicted. Electricity was found to be a successful 
remedy, and she gradually recovered, though very 
feeble still when Hayley left them. At this time 
Hayley was forty-seven years of age, Cowper 
sixty-one, and Mrs. Unwin nearly seventy. But 
from this period Cowper's mental malady seems to 
deepen and darken, while the intervals of relief 
and cheerfulness grow more infrequent and tran- 
sient. His visit to Hayley at Eartham was a 
season of partial enjoyment, but Mrs. Unwinds in- 



HARASSING NIGHT VISIONS. 321 

creasing illness was a cause of deep dejection and 
of ceaseless care. The gloom and distress of Cow- 
per's mind were sometimes insupportable. Despair 
seemed not only to have involved his heart, bnt 
threatened even a paralysis of his intellect. The 
dread delusion that his soul had been rejected of 
God still adhered to him, after his recovery from 
the attack in 1787, and his system was more 
than ever subject to nervous fever and disturb- 
ance. In his sleep he was racked with distressing 
dreams, and scared with visions, so that his nights 
were dreadful. " Distressed and full of despair, 
the day hardly ever comes in which I do not utter 
a wish that I had never been born. And the night 
is become so habitually a season of dread to me 
that I never lie down on my bed with comfort, and 
am in this respect a greater sufferer than Job, who, 
concerning his hours of rest, could hope at least, 
though he was disappointed ; but in my case, to 
go to sleep is to throw myself into the mouth of 
my enemy." 

In another letter he says, " I wake almost con- 
stantly under the influence of a nervous fever, by 
which my spirits are affected to such a degree 
that the oppression is almost insupportable. Since 
I wrote last, I have been plunged in deeps unvis- 
ited, I am convinced, by any human soul but 
mine ; and though the day in its progress bears 

awav with it some part of this melancholy, I am 
14* 



322 CONTINUED SUFFERING. 

never cheerful, because I can never hope, and am 
so bounded in my prospects that to look forward 
to another year to me seems madness." Mrs. Un- 
win, too, was in a deplorable condition, which itself 
overtasked Cowper's sympathy and care. Her 
paralytic illnesses were gradually rendering her own 
mind gloomy and helpless, so that the combination 
of distresses in their condition was deplorably af- 
fecting. " Like myself," wrote Cowper, " she is 
dejected ; dejected both on my account and on her 
own. Unable to amuse herself either with work 
or reading, she looks forward to a new day with 
despondence, weary of it before it begins, and 
longing for the return of night. Thus it is with 
us both. If I endeavor to pray, I get my answer 
in a double portion of misery. My petitions, there- 
fore, are reduced to three words, and those not 
very often repeated, ( God have mercy/ " 

This situation was so gloomily and deplorably 
painful, that, as Cowper himself said, it seemed mi- 
raculous in his own eyes, that always occupied as he 
was in the contemplation of the most distressing 
subjects, he was not absolutely incapacitated for 
the common offices of life. " My purpose/' said 
he, " is to continue such prayer as I can make, 
although with all this reason to conclude that it is 
not accepted, and though I have been more than 
once forbidden, in my own apprehension, by Him 
to whom it is addressed." At another time he 



IMPRESSIONS IN DREAMS. 323 

says, " Neither waking nor sleeping have I any 
communications from God, but am perfectly a 
withered tree, fruitless and leafless. A conscious- 
ness that He exists, that once He favored me, but 
that I have offended to the forfeiture of all such 
mercies, is ever present with me ; and of such 
thoughts consist the whole of my religious expe- 
riences." 

Again, " I feel in the mean time every thing 
that denotes a man an outcast and a reprobate. 
I dream in the night that God has rejected me 
finally, and that all promises and all answers to 
prayers made for me are mere delusions. I wake 
under a strong and clear conviction that these 
communications are from God, and in the course 
of the day nothing occurs to invalidate that per- 
suasion. As I have said before, there is a mystery 
in this matter that I am not able to explain. I 
believe myself the only instance of a man to whom 
God will promise every thing, and perform noth- 
ing." This impression was connected with a voice 
which he thought he heard in the year 1786, before 
the dreadful access of delirium in 178T, and which 
his diseased imagination interpreted as the voice 
of God, " I will promise you any thing." 

Meanwhile, Cowper had undertaken the labor 
of a new edition of Milton with notes, the respon- 
sibility of which, the more clearly he saw the im- 
possibility of accomplishing it, was as a dark 



324 DISTRESSING DREAMS. 

mountain before him. He was also laboriously at 
work in another revision of his translation of 
Homer ; and his hours of labor were so imprudently 
arranged, that this alone must have been a great 
exasperating cause of his depression. Notwith- 
standing his miseries by night, and his sufferings 
on waking — " I wake always/' said he, " under a 
terrible impression of the wrath of God, and for 
the most part with words that fill me with alarm, 
and with the dread of woes to come" — notwith- 
standing this, he rose every morning at six, and 
worked incessantly and laboriously upon Homer 
till near eleven, before breakfasting ! Some four 
hours of exhausting task-work, daily, in this cruel 
manner, so fatigued both body and mind as to ren- 
der him utterly incapable of any other labor. This 
course was pursued at this time, in order that he 
might have the whole day, after Mrs. Unwin rose, 
to devote uninterrupted to the care of that dear 
invalid ; but it was exhausting and depressing in 
the highest degree. 

What he sometimes endured at night, as well 
as by day, may be judged from some of his letters. 
"From four this morning till after seven I lay 
meditating terrors, such terrors as no language can 
express, and as no heart, I am sure, but mine ever 
knew. My very finger-ends tingled with it, as in- 
deed they often do. I then slept and dreamed a 
long dream, in which I argued with many tears 



SINGULARLY VIVID DREAM. 325 

that my salvation is impossible. I recapitulated, 
in the most impassioned accent and manner, the 
unexampled severity of God's dealings with me in 
the course of the last twenty years, especially in 
the year 1773, and again in 1786, and concluded 
all with observing that I must infallibly perish, and 
that the Scriptures which speak of the insufficiency 
of man to save himself can never be understood 
unless I perish." Again he says, "I was visited 
with a horrible dream, in which I seemed to be 
taking a final leave of my dwelling, and every ob- 
ject with which I have been most familiar, on the 
evening before my execution. I felt the tenderest 
regret at the separation, and looked about for 
something durable to carry with me as a memorial. 
The iron hasp of the garden-door presenting itself, 
I was on the point of taking that ; but recollecting 
that the heat of the fire in which I was going to 
be tormented would fuse the metal, and that it 
would therefore only serve to increase my insup- 
portable misery, I left it. I then awoke in all the 
horror with which the reality of such circumstances 
would fill me." 

In one of his letters to Lady Hesketh, speaking 
of his continued labors upon Homer, Cowper says, 
and truly says : " Had Pope been subject to the 
same alarming speculations, had he, waking and 
sleeping, dreamed as I do, I am inclined to think 
he would not have been my predecessor in those 



326 REASONINGS OF THE INSANE. 



labors ; for I compliment myself with a persuasion 
that I have more heroic valor, of the passive kind 
at least, than he had, perhaps than any man ; it 
would be strange had I not, after so much ex- 
ercise." 

The trains of Cowper's reasoning in his dreams 
may some of them be curiously and instructively 
compared with illustrations of a waking insanity ; 
as, for example, in the instance of George the Third, 
who once addressed himself to two persons long 
dead under the idea that they were living and in 
his presence. " Your Majesty forgets/' said Sir 
Henry Halford, "that they both died many years 
ago." " True," replied His Majesty, " died to you 
and to the world in general, but not to me. You, 
Sir Henry, are forgetting that I have the power 
of holding intercourse with those whom you call 
dead. Yes, Sir Henry Halford, it is in vain, so far 
as I am concerned, that you kill your patients. 
Yes, Dr. Baillie ; but — Baillie, Baillie ? — I don't 
know. Baillie is an anatomist ; he dissects his 
patients ; and then it would not be a resuscitation 
merely, but a re-creation ; and that, I think, is 
beyond my power." 

In the year 1787, just before the sudden and 
terrible attack of his malady, which was the third, 
Cowper had complained to Lady Hesketh of his 
nervous fever rendering his nights almost sleepless 
during a whole week. Then the fever left him en- 



/ 



OPINIONS ON DREAMS. 327 

tirely, and he slept quietly, soundly, and long. 
Then, most unexpectedly, ensued the dreaded 
crisis, and Cowper's mind seemed instantly to have 
plunged plumb down ten thousand fathom deep 
into depths that he fully believed no other human 
being had ever sounded. The prostration contin- 
ued for months, and the whole period, as to em- 
ployment and social intercourse, was a vacuum, but 
not as to consciousness, though he never put on 
record a single detail of his profoundly distressing 
experience. 

But in that letter to Lady Hesketh which pre- 
ceded this attack he had been led by a reference, 
to Mrs. Carter's opinions on the subject of dreams, 
to speak of his own, which, though he said with 
truth that he was free from superstition, he be- 
lieved were sometimes prophetic. Mrs. Carter, he 
said, had had no extraordinary dreams, "and 
therefore accounted them only the ordinary opera- 
tions of the fancy. Mine are of a texture that 
will not suffer me to ascribe them to so inadequate 
a cause, or to any cause but the operation of an 
exterior agency. I have a mind, my dear (and to 
you I will venture to boast of it), as free from 
superstitition as any man living, neither do I give 
heed to dreams in general as predictive, though 
particular dreams I believe to be so." 

The time had been when the burden of Cow- 
per's distress was felt in gloom and apprehension 



328 OPINIONS ON DREAMS. 

mainly in the day-time, but often in his dreams 
he had intervals of peace and joy, and renewed 
that blissful communion with God, of which his 
hymn entitled " Ketirement" presents so exquisitely 
beautiful a description. At a later period there came 
a darker change, and day and night were but a 
variation of the same portentous clouds and im- 
ages of woe. The reasoning in the dream concern- 
ing the iron hasp of the gate is exactly an instance 
of the manner in which an ordinary and confirmed 
lunatic will reason from his insane premises while 
wide awake. But this was not the type of Cow- 
per's insanity, for his mind was under complete 
control in the day time, and he was infinitely 
more sane in his dreadful depression and despair, in 
consequence of believing that he was cut off for- 
ever from the happiness of salvation, than any of 
his careless but affectionate friends were (for such 
he had) in their confidence and freedom from 
anxiety. If, as Southey has falsely said, Cowper's 
malady "had been what is termed religious mad- 
ness," theirs was the worst madness of having no 
religion at all, the malady of an insane heedless- 
ness about both its anxieties and its hopes. 
Dreams which by such minds would be scoffed at 
as the bugbears of superstition, would fill a heart 
that was truly anxious on the subject of an eter- 
nal state with trembling and astonishment. Such 
dreams might be, like the Gospel itself to men's 



PRAYERFUL SYMPATHY. 329 

waking vision, the means of thoughtfulness and 
grace to the one class, and of contempt and perdi- 
tion to the other. 

Once in a while his dreams were brighter. " I 
dreamed about four nights ago that, walking I 
know not where, I suddenly found my thoughts 
drawn toward God, when I looked upward and 
exclaimed, c I love Thee even now more than many 
who see Thee daily/ " How affectingly true in 
regard to the reality was this exclamation, though 
uttered in a dream, and though the afflicted rea- 
son of Cowper would not have dared to utter it 
waking ! 

The notes of his misery were given in greatest 
fullness to his neighbor and Christian friend, Mr. 
Teedon, the schoolmaster at Olney, from whose pa- 
pers it was that such revelations were at length pre- 
sented of what Cowper really suffered. Mr. Newton 
regarded Mr. Teedon with friendly esteem, although 
Southey intimates that if Newton had been there 
on the ground, or if Mr. Unwin had been living, 
and known what was going on, they would have 
interposed, the one on behalf of the afflicted poet, 
the other on behalf of Mrs. Unwin, to prevent them 
from having any resort to Mr. Teedon's sympathy 
and prayers. Mrs. Unwin had been wont to com- 
mend their suffering friend to Mr. Teedon's sup- 
plications, that God would in mercy break away 
the dreadful gloom of his despondency, and restore 



330 GLIMPSES OF COMFORT. 

to him the light of His countenance. Cowper him- 
self was for a season comforted by his earnest 
prayers, and was accustomed to tell him, as in a 
sort of diary, the spiritual terrors he was passing 
through. 

But Southey treats these communications be- 
tween the poet and his humble Christian friend 
with scorn, and endeavors to hold up the school- 
master to utter derision, as a contemptible mixture 
of the fool and fanatic, who presumptuously dared 
to suppose that he could pray for a being so su- 
perior to him in intellect as Cowper, and that God 
would give him such answers as might comfort the 
suffering heart in prison, and unable to pray for 
itself. Southey derides this man's prayers, and 
Cowper's application for them, as if they and it 
were pitiable and ridiculous to the last degree. 
He seems indignant that Cowper should have been 
a party to such spiritual consultations and efforts. 
Yet it was to Mr. Teedon's affectionate arguments, 
persuasions, and encouragements that Cowper 
yielded so far as to resume his own interrupted ap- 
proaches to the throne of grace ; and when noth- 
ing on earth could minister to him one ray of com- 
fort, he was enabled to glean some hope in the 
assured earnestness and constancy of this Christian 
friend's petitions for him at the mercy-seat. But 
Southey seems filled with anger at the very thought 
of comfort so administered ; it seems as if he re- 



GLIMPSES OF LIGHT. 331 

gaided it as the last possible humiliation of lunacy 
that Cowper should permit a poor, lowly school- 
master at Olney, to pray for him and consult with 
him. In truth, the brightest gleams of comfort 
in this dark, declining period of his life, and the 
only intervals of hope, were enjoyed by Cowper 
through the instrumentality of this despised 
Christian. 

These records of what Southey calls pitiable 
consultations, treating them with most unfeeling 
contempt, are among the most affecting demon- 
strations both of Cowper's sufferings and of his 
genuine piety. They are no proof of superstition, 
but of confidence in prayer, unbroken even to the 
last, and confidence in God as the hearer of prayer. 
They convey, too, such manifestations of the affec- 
tionate gratitude of Cowper to the humble indi- 
vidual whom he regarded as instrumental of any 
spiritual blessing to him, or any alleviation of his 
distress, that there is more of pleasure than of 
painfulness, in this view, in their perusal. Cow- 
per's first letter from Hayley's house at Eartham, 
in this distressing year, was written to Mr. Teedon, 
(which Southey notes as in itself a great humilia- 
tion), and it contains the following sweet passage : 
"I had one glimpse — at least I was willing to 
hope it was a glimpse — of heavenly light by the 
way ; an answer, I suppose, to many fervent 
prayers of yours. Continue to pray for us, and 



332 



PERSEVERANCE IN PRAYER. 



when any thing occurs worth communicating, let 
us know it. Mrs. Unwin is in charming spirits, to 
which the incomparable air and delightful scenes 
of- Eartham have much contributed. But our 
thanks are always due to the Giver of all good 
for these and all His benefits ; for without His 
blessing, Paradise itself would not cheer the soul 
that knows Him." 

It is remarkable that the wanderings of Cow- 
per's mind in the chaos of dreams, though contin- 
ually pervaded by the same terror as by day, were 
mingled with intervals of celestial light and com- 
fort. He was not always scared with visions, nor 
barred all access to the mercy-seat, but as if the 
soul had escaped for a season from its prison, and 
was soaring at liberty, he enjoyed heartfelt com- 
munion with God. And the following paragraphs 
in some of his notes to Mr. Teedon show that one 
beneficial effect was produced by Mr. Teedon's 
prayerful efforts and affectionate counsels and en- 
treaties, which the whole world of the wise and the 
literary could not have effected ; they persuaded 
Cowper to persevere in prayer : 

" I have now persevered in the punctual per- 
formance of the duty of prayer. My purpose is 
to continue such prayer as I can make, although 
with all this reason to conclude that it is not ac- 
cepted, and though I have been more than once 
forbidden, in my own apprehension, by Him to 



god's pkesenoe. 333 

whom it is addressed. You will tell me that God 
never forbids any body to pray, but, on the con- 
trary, encourages all to do it. I answer — No. 
Some he does not encourage, and some he even 
forbids ; not by words, perhaps, but by a secret 
negative found only in their experience. 

" Since I wrote last, my nights have been less 
infected with horrid dreams and wakings, and I 
would willingly hope that it is in answer to the 
prayers I offer ; lifeless as they are, I shall not dis- 
continue the practice, you may be sure, so long as 
I have even this encouragement to observe it. 

" Two or three nights since I dreamed that I 
had God's presence largely, and seemed to pray 
with much liberty. I then proceeded dreaming 
about many other things, all vain and foolish ; 
but at last I dreamed that recollecting my pleas- 
ant dream, I congratulated myself on the exact 
recollection that I had of my prayer, and of all 
that passed in it. But when I waked, not a sin- 
gle word could I remember ; the single circum- 
stance that my heart had been enlarged was all 
that remained with me/' 

To Newton he wrote as follows : " Prayer I 
know is made for me, and sometimes with great 
enlargement of heart by those who offer it ; and 
in this circumstance consists the only evidence I 
can find that God is still favorably mindful of 
me, and has not cast me off forever." This 



334 JOHNSON'S DIARY.' 

gleam of consolation was derived wholly from the 
freedom of his communications with Mr. Teedon, 
called by Southey a dangerous superstition, and 
regarded as a mortifying proof of his insanity. 

It is singularly interesting to compare and 
contrast these records of Cowper's conflicts, and 
of a fellow-christian's sympathizing efforts for 
him in prayer, and his own earnest desires and 
hopes that God might answer such prayer, though 
he himself seemed by solitary edict excluded from 
all hopeful approach to God as his Heavenly 
Father, with the records of really pitiable and 
humiliating superstition in Dr. Johnson's Diary. 
These were remarked upon by Cowper himself in 
one of his letters to Newton in 1785, but Southey 
has not one word to utter in regard to the danger 
to be apprehended from such superstitions, while 
he sees in Cowper's anxiety for the prayers of a 
christian friend, and in that friend's belief that 
such prayers are answered, nothing but proof of 
egregious self-conceit and vanity on one side, and 
a mind half insane on the other. Cowper speaks 
of the publisher of Johnson's Diary as being 
" neither much a friend to the cause of religion, 
nor to the author's memory ; for by the specimen 
of it that has reached us, it seems to contain only 
such stuff as has a direct tendency to expose both 
to ridicule. His prayers for the dead, and his 
minute account of the rigor with which he ob- 



JOHNSON'S DIARY. 335 

served church fasts, whether he drank tea or 
coffee, whether with sugar or without, and whether 
one or two dishes of either, are the most important 
items to he found in the childish register of the 
great Johnson, supreme dictator in the chair of 
literature, and almost a driveler in his closet ; a 
melancholy witness to testify how much of the 
wisdom of this world may consist with almost 
infantine ignorance of the affairs of a better." 

The record in Johnson's Diary is that of de- 
plorable superstition and Komish bondage unto 
fear, arising from the want of an intelligent ap- 
prehension of the method of redemption in Christ, 
and a heartfelt reliance upon his atoning mercy 
for justification. But the record in Cowper's his- 
tory, and in the broken series of notes between 
him and Mr. Teedon, is of a mind fully awake 
both to the terrors of hell and the glories of re- 
demption, and also perfectly acquainted with God's 
method of acceptance and of pardon, and per- 
fectly submissive to that method, and relying only 
on that ; a mind also encompassed with spiritual 
terrors, and burdened with despair, but at the 
same time confident in God's readiness to hear 
and answer prayer, and expecting relief, grace, 
and deliverance in no other way ; not by observing 
church fasts, or drinking .tea without sugar, or 
setting always the left foot first across the thresh- 
old, but by faith in the Lord Jesus, and prayer in 



336 cowpeb's conflict, 

His all-prevailing name as our Advocate with 
God. 

It is a picture of the dreadful conflict of a 
mind "plunged in deeps," as Cowper thought, 
" unvisited by any other human soul ;" a child of 
God, harassed with the belief that for a special 
and peculiar reason God would not hear his own 
prayers, and sometimes forbade him to pray, turn- 
ing for help and hope to the intercessions of a 
fellow Christian, acquainted with that conflict, 
and filled with sympathizing grief on account of 
it, and to whom Cowper believed, and had reason 
to believe, that God granted daily enjoyment in 
prayer, daily and sweet access to the throne of 
grace. Now in all this Cowper certainly had both 
Apostlic examples and injunctions to guide him, 
and the instructions of Divine Inspiration to 
sanction his course. Paul never intimates that it 
is egregious conceit and vanity in any common 
Christian to imagine that God will answer his 
prayers, but he does earnestly beg all common 
Christians (common or uncommon) to pray for 
him, and he does say that he fully expects partic- 
ular blessings through their prayers. And the 
Apostle James says indeed nothing about get- 
ting relief to a burdened heart by drinking tea 
without sugar, but he does say, confess your sins 
one to another, and pray one for another ; and 
he does not intimate that the prayers of a literary 



cowper's discernment. 337 

man and a poet are of any greater efficacy before 
God than those of a poor schoolmaster ; he does 
not intimate that a man must be learned and 
refined before he can dare presume that God will 
hear his prayers ; neither does he intimate that 
prayers from the prayer-book will be heard, while 
extempore prayers from the Christian's own heart, 
if offered in the confidence that God will hear 
them, are only fanaticism and presumption. 

Furthermore, the sorrows, terrors, and burdens 
of the soul are the very evils of all others, in 
which God would have Christians seek the aid of 
one another's prayers ; and to rely on sincere prayer, 
in such a case, is not to rely on man, but God. 
The affectionate turning of Cowper's despairing 
heart to Mr. Teedon's prayers for spiritual sympa- 
thy and comfort is a most striking proof of the 
prevalence of faith and christian fellowship even 
above despair. Cowper felt a confidence in Mr. 
Teedon's christian character from long acquaint- 
ance with him ; and the failings of tediousness and 
verboseness in conversation, with some foibles of 
vanity even, were little things in comparison with 
the possession of an honest, grateful, and sympa- 
thizing heart. Cowper was not a man easily to 
be deceived or imposed upon, but he had very 
great discernment of character, and was never in 
the habit of concealing or denying his impressions. 
For example, in one of his letters to Newton, in 
15 



338 CHKISTIAN SYMPATHY. 

the year 1784, lie thus speaks of a man whom 
they had both known, and whose professions of 
religious experience it would seem had been some- 
what large : " He says much about the Lord and 
His dealings with him ; but I have long considered 
James as a sort of peddler and hawker in these 
matters, rather than as a creditable and substan- 
tial merchant." 

Mr. Teedon, Cowper knew to be a very different 
person, sincere and fervent in his Christian emo- 
tions, and irreproachable in his Christian life. As 
he had known much of Cowper' s trials, and for a 
long space of time, it was very natural that both 
Cowper and Mrs. Unwin should not turn away 
from a Christian sympathy expressed by him in 
notes as well as in conversation, but should some- 
what freely, and with kindness, answer his in- 
quiries. Hence the communications that sprang 
up between them ; earnest desires for prayer and 
help on the one side, and assurances of prayer and 
encouragements to hope that it would be answered 
on the other. The Christian circles at Olney and 
at Weston did not despise Mr. Teedon for his pov- 
erty, nor for the fact of his gaining an humble 
subsistence in the capacity of village schoolmaster ; 
nor did they regard it as a mark of egregious van- 
ity and conceit in him to suppose that God might 
possibly answer his prayers, any more than in 
Newton himself, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
praying on the Lord's day out of the prayer-book. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

LORD MAHON'S ACCUSATION AGAINST WESLEY. — THE IMMEDIATE 
EFFICACY OF PRAYER. — DANGER OF DELUSION IN A RELIGION 
ESTABLISHED BY THE STATE. — CONSISTENCY OF COWPER WITH 
SCRIPTURE IN ASKING AN INTEREST IN OTHERS' PRAYERS. — LET- 
TERS TO NEWTON AND HAYLEY. 

Lord Mahon, in his History of England, in the 
chapter on Methodism, says that a " solemn accu- 
sation might have been brought against Wesley 
for the presumption with which he sometimes as- 
cribed immediate efficacy to his prayers/' He also 
says, among other evils of his career enumerated, 
that "very many persons have been tormented 
with dreadful agonies and pangs '" besides the 
great evil of the Church being weakened by so 
large a separation from it as the formation of the 
Methodist churches occasioned. 

The agonies and pangs were simply those that 
Paul himself experienced when he found himself 
slain by the Law ; those that Bunyan and Luther 
experienced in a conflict protracted beneath the 
burden and the sense of guilt, much longer than 
Paul's was, before they would learn the lesson which 



340 LORD MAHON ON METHODISM. 

the Law, as our schoolmaster, was appointed to teach 
in bringing us to Christ ; and those that Cowper 
also experienced, but which Southey, and others 
with him, regarded as a dangerous delusion, re- 
sulting from an exaggerated idea of human de- 
pravity. If it is an evil that very many persons 
should be thus tormented, would ignorance of sin, 
and insensibility to its guilt and danger, be the 
smaller evil, or the preferable way ? Or is there 
any way into the kingdom of Heaven without some 
experience of such pangs and agonies ? There is 
indeed a way into the Church, smooth, easy, in- 
offensive ; but that is not necessarily Heaven, nor 
does belonging to the Church necessarily include 
the knowledge or experience of religion. Yet 
such would seem to be Lord Mahon's and Southey's 
idea of piety, or a main element in it, and security 
of it ; a religion established by the State ; a 
Church, the membership of which is to be accepted 
as salvation. And to compel people to come into 
the Church by pangs and agonies, when they 
ought to be members of it in their own right by 
law, by simple baptism and morality, is a great in- 
jury and oppression ! 

The historian's idea of religion must be curious, 
indeed, judging from such complaints. Then, 
again, it is asserted to be presumption, an element 
of fanaticism and vanity, such as Southey says Mr. 
Teedon was inspired with, for an individual Chris- 



EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. 341 

tian to suppose that God will hear and at once an- 
swer his prayers. For the immediate efficacy of 
prayer can be only in the way of such answer, and 
that is what the accusation means. A proper and 
respectable religion, therefore, such as is embodied 
in the Established Church of England, must, in 
the view of many, eschew and reject such an ele- 
ment. Prayer can be efficacious only by virtue of 
the Church, and can be answered only in a churchly 
way, but not for any individual soul by itself ! Is 
it possible that a man of intelligence and learning, 
with any knowledge of the Gospel, can deliberately 
repose his confidence on such a piety, and believe 
himself insured into salvation by organic Church 
life, and participant in the efficacy of prayer by 
belonging to a Church that has an established 
liturgy ? 

It were worth while for such a person to ques- 
tion with himself what could the Apostle James 
have meant, in referring all believers to the exam- 
ple of Elijah, as an incontrovertible proof that 
any believing soul, coming to God in the confidence 
that He is the rewarder of all who diligently seek 
Him, shall be likewise directly answered. Why 
did James take pains to remind us of the fact 
that Elias was a man subject to like passions as 
ourselves, except for the purpose of establishing 
the fact that it is a universal rule, irrespective of 
churches and of persons, that God does hear and 



342 EXAMPLE OF ELIJAH. 

answer prayer, if presented in sincerity and faith ? 
The case of Elias was a great precedent, interpret- 
ing this rule, first, because Elias was a man, not 
an angel, nor a Church ; second, because he was a 
man of the same passions and infirmities as we 
are, and not a perfect man, and neither heard nor 
answered on account of his perfection or his prayer- 
book, but on account of God's mercy and his own 
faith. So shall any man of like passions be heard 
and answered. 

Moreover, it were well to . ask what would that 
personal piety be worth which was not distin- 
guished by a belief in the immediate efficacy of 
prayer ? Can there be such a thing as true 
prayer without something of that belief ? If the 
Lord Jesus has taught his disciples to pray, be- 
lieving that they shall receive those things for 
which they ask according to the will of God, and 
has even based the acceptableness of their prayers 
on that belief, then the disciple who has not that 
belief is destitute of an essential ingredient in the 
spirit of prayer. Perhaps Lord Mahon meant 
what the Duke of Wellington was wont to call 
fancy-prayers, that is, extempore prayers, without 
the prayer-book. Probably Lord Mahon, as a good 
Churchman, would not have ascribed presumption 
to Wesley, if he had prayed only out of the prayer- 
book ; would not have accused him of fanaticism 
for imagining an immediate efficacy in tJw'se 






EXTEMPOEE PRAYER. 343 

prayers. It was only his prayers, Wesley's, which 
it was presumptuous to suppose were attended 
with immediate efficacy ! 

And it would seem from such a scheme, that 
even if the prayers in the prayer-book are as- 
sumed and offered by individual members of the 
Church, it is presumption in any one to suppose 
that they can be answered as the prayers of the in- 
dividual, on the exercise of the individual's desires 
and faith ; such a thing as an answer is only to 
be expected on the ground of the right of the Es- 
tablished Church to present the supplication, and 
only through the mediation of the Church. The 
Church and the prayer-book in such a case are but 
the Pope and the Priest " writ large •" and there 
is as effectual a barrier interposed between the soul 
and Christ, as there is by penance and the confes- 
sional, instead of prayer. 

A singular conception is the true historical con- 
ception of a religion established by the State ; — a 
religion simply and solely of prescribed forms and 
prayers, with a decent morality attached to them, 
together with a security against all enthusiasm. 
A conservative religion, protecting the community 
from being tormented with dreadful agonies and 
pangs, by the assurance of being personally stereo- 
typed into Heaven by reliance on the proxy of an 
accepted liturgy, efficacious on account of an 
organic Church-life, imparted through it to the 



344 A FATAL DELUSION. 

soul of every worshiper ! How inestimable the 
favor of a sound religious currency established by 
law, as genuine and infallible as the notes of the 
Bank of England ; an experience superscribed and 
minted, as the Church-and-Caesar's appointed coin, 
the possessors of which shall defy all pangs and 
agonies, passing into the Kingdom like the Iron 
Duke, by virtue of the prayer-book under his 
arm ! The holders of such coin look down with 
pity and contempt on an experience like that of 
John Bunyan, for example, as being the fever of a 
burning enthusiasm, from which the true Church 
happily exempts and defends her children. 

" Very many persons have been tormented with 
dreadful agonies and pangs" by the undignified 
and cruel system of a personal experience of relig- 
ion introduced by John Wesley ; agonies and 
pangs under the conviction of being lost sinners, 
which might all have been avoided by trusting in 
the Church, the prayer-book, and the sacraments. 
Alas, what a frightful delusion is this ! And what 
multitudes of immortal beings, as capable of rea- 
soning in regard to their eternal destiny as Lord 
Mahon, and with the sacred Scriptures before 
them, are at this very day staking their all for 
eternity on the assurance that they are safe from 
perdition by the sacraments and the Church. 
With reference to just such a delusion prevailing 
in the Jewish Church, our Blessed Lord told the 




i 



ARCHBISHOP SECKER. 345 

Jews and His own disciples, that the children of 
the kingdom, they that trusted in the Church 
and in their belonging to it, should be cast into 
outer darkness, where there would be weeping and 
gnashing of teeth. The Pharisee, belonging to the 
kingdom, ridicules the prayer of the humble Pub- 
lican, God be mercifid to me a sinner ! — and re- 
jects with contempt the idea of the fanaticism 
that would ascribe immediate efficacy to such 
prayer. Poor Mr. Teedon, the schoolmaster ! To 
think that Cowper should be reduced to such hu- 
miliation of mind as to beg an interest in such a 
Christian's prayers, and venture to hope for an 
answer to them ! 

It is an impressive and illustrative anecdote 
which is related of Archbishop Seeker on his sick 
bed, when visited by Mr. Talbot, Vicar of St. 
Giles's, Reading, who had lived in great intimacy 
with him, and received his preferment from him. 
" You will pray with me, Talbot," said the arch- 
bishop, during their interview. Mr. Talbot rose 
up, and went to look for a prayer-book. " That is 
not what I want now," said the dying prelate ; 
" kneel down by me, and pray for me in the way 
I know you are used to do." The man of God 
readily complied with this command, and kneeling 
down, prayed earnestly from his heart for his 
dying friend the archbishop, whom he saw no 

more. 

15* 






346 PROOF OF SANITY 



We can see no reason why Mr. Teedon might 
not offer as earnest and acceptable prayer for Cow- 
per as Mr. Talbot for Archbishop Seeker. And if 
the archbishop needed such prayer when dying, 
and was not insane in asking for it, the poet also 
might have need of it living, and his seeking for 
it was not necessarily a proof of insanity, but the 
reverse. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

IMPRESSIVE LESSONS FROM COWPER'S IMAGINARY DESPAIR. — GOD 
DOES NOT REQUIRE ANY TO BE -WILLING TO BE DAMNED; BUT 
ETERNAL SEPARATION FROM GOD IS DAMNATION. — MISTAKE OF 
MYSTICISM AND POETRY. — COWPER SUBMISSIVE TO GOD'S WLLL, 
BUT NOT WILLING TO BE SEPARATED FROM HIM. — COWPER'S 
GENTLENESS. — FALSE REMARK OF LEIGH HUNT IN REGARD TO 
ROMNEY'S PORTRAIT OF COWPER. 

The spectacle of Cowper's misery and helpless- 
ness beneath the despotism of an imaginary de- 
spair, conveys a most vivid and impressive lesson 
of the necessity of spiritual joy for active useful- 
ness. Hope is not only the anchor, but the im- 
pulsive power of the soul. Hence we see the error 
even in Madame Guion, of a mysticism that seeks 
to rise to an unreal exaltation, an imaginary and 
impossible elevation, not only not enjoined in the 
Word of God, but forbidden by the principles of 
true piety. One of her pieces, translated by Cow- 
per, contains the following stanza, supposed to be 
the language of a soul brought to such a point of 
absolute self-renunciation as to be willing that 
God should depart forever. And this is imagined 



348 IMAGINARY SUBMISSION. 

to be the ineffable point of acquiescence, to which 
God, in hiding His face, would bring the soul that 
loves Him. Translated from poetry into plain 
prose, it is the requisition that a man be willing 
to be damned ; that is to say, it is submission to 
Satan's will, not God's, that is required of the 
sinner ; for God's will is, that man should not 
only desire to be saved, but that every believing 
man shall be saved ; while Satan's will is, that 
man should be willing to be lost, and should 
be lost. 

" Be uot angry ; I resign, 
Henceforth ; all my will to Thine : 
I consent that Thou depart 
Though Thine absence breaks ray heart : 
Go, then, and forever too ; 
All is right that Thou wilt do. 
This was just what Love intended, 
He was now no more offended : 
Soon as I became a child, 
Love returned to me and smiled." 

Now this is exaggeration to the verge of impiety. 
God says; Woe unto them, when I depart from 
them. And in all the realm of true theology 
there is not the beginning of a requisition from 
God that any of His creatures should be willing 
to have Him depart from them forever. Accord- 
ingly, we see how different was the character of 
Cowper's experience ; even in his madness, it was 
more consonant with God's Word. For he was 



IMAGINABI SUBMISSION. 349 

not willing that God should depart from hiin, and 
while a ray of reason remained, he could not be. 
And, in truth, the whole essence and acuteness 
of his misery was in just this, that he believed 
God had departed from him ; and hence he suffered, 
as far perhaps as any creature not deserted of 
God, but only under a delusion, could suffer, some- 
thing of the torture of eternal despair. If this 
belief had always prevailed, as in some exaspera- 
tions of his malady it did prevail, he could never 
have put pen to paper, never could have occupied 
his exquisite genius, his transparent intellect, so 
admirably balanced in all other respects, on any 
subject of thought whatever, and not even on the 
subject of his despair. There would have ensued 
the blackness and confusion of an absolute chaos. 
Again, and again, under the influence of such 
despair, Cowper exclaimed, Oh, that I had never 
been born, or that I could cease to be, forever ! 
How much truer to the truth, to the reality of 
things, in this matter, was Cowper's madness than 
Milton's poetry ! For Milton has put into the 
mouth of one of his lost angels, in melancholy 
eloquence of language, a preference of continued 
existence, even in despair and pain, rather than 
the cure by annihilation. 

" And that must end us ; that must be our cure, 
To be no more : sad cure I for who would lose, 
Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 
Those thoughts that wander through eternity ?" 



350 



SUFFERING WITH HOPE 



But the absence of God from the soul, and an 
eternal banishment from Him, could not be com- 
patible with any joy or consolation from the thoughts 
that wander through eternity, at least was not in 
the case of Cowper. And it is worthy of notice 
that Milton himself has ascribed those lines to a 
slothful and ignoble devil, ever intent on making 
the worse appear the better reason, and has be- 
sides supposed the light of hope still shining, and 
the worst not known ; so that this language was 
not the language of despair. The fallen spirit 
that counseled sloth, not peace, imagined still 
that happier days might wait them : 

"Our Supreme Foe in time may much remit 
His anger ; and, perhaps, thus far removed, 
Nor mind us, not offending, satisfied 
With what is punished : whence these raging fires 
Will slacken if His breath stirs not their flames. 
Our purer essence then will overcome 
Their noxious vapor ; or inured, not feel ; 
Or changed at length, and to the place conformed 
In temper and in nature, will receive 
Familiar the fierce heat, and, void of pain, 
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light: 
Besides what hope the never-ending flight 
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change 
Worth waiting." 



This, then, is the reasoning, not even of im- 
aginary despair, but of hope ; while Cowper's in- 
sanity was the adoption of what the feelings and 
the language of absolute despair would have been, 



SUFFERING IN DESPAIR. 351 

if real. Insanity itself is truer to nature than in- 
sensibility and unbelief; and insanity is preferable, 
in such an interest, to ignorance, presumption, and 
misrepresentation. 

And whatever men may think or say as to the 
cause of Cowper's insanity, there is a most in- 
structive lesson from its manifestation. It is a 
very solemn picture of the misery which may and 
must be consequent on the destruction of all hope 
in the eternal world. It can not be borne. The 
best constituted and the strongest mind can not 
endure it. If ever any man had a combination of 
faculties and feelings, of genius and affection, which 
could enable him to bear up under the pressure 
of sorrows, it was Cowper. He united in his own 
heart and intellect a sensitive nervous suscepti- 
bility, both natural and spiritual, to the touches 
both of sorrow and joy, and a tender, compassion- 
ate concern for others' distresses, along with an 
elastic, buoyant spirit, a native power of humor, 
and an exquisite relish of true wit and drollery, 
that could seize the element of laughter, even 
amid care and pain, and for the moment forget 
every thing but the ludicrous. Naturally, he 
loved to look on the bright side, not the dark, and 
was not to be imposed upon by the exaggeration 
of difficulties. 

Now in all common suffering, all suffering this 
side that world where there is no suffering which is 



352 A WOUNDED SPIRIT. 

not endless, these faculties, this happy constitution 
of mind and heart, would bear up a man through 
great conflicts, would support and encourage him. 
The spirit of such a man could sustain his in- 
firmity ; but take away hope, and a spirit so 
wounded, who can bear ? No man, even in this 
life, can endure even the delusion of despair, the 
moment it approaches much resemblance to the 
reality. It is truly an infernal power, a power of 
madness, contradictory and chaotic, demonstrated 
by its hurrying even through self-murder, into the 
reality, beforehand. The very image is so terri- 
rible that it takes away the reason. And faith in 
Christ, humble, affectionate confidence in Him, is 
the only true keeper of the reason of a fallen 
man. The peace of G-od, that passeth all under- 
standing, keeps both heart and mind in Christ 
Jesus, and that only can. 

And here, we must remark, what has never 
been properly noted, the characteristic of Cowper's 
insanity, as only against himself, but gentle, kind, 
affectionate, and loving toward all others. The 
whole circle and combination of his intellectual 
powers were transfused with adoration and love 
toward the Kedeemer, and charity toward all 
mankind. His were a mind and affections sancti- 
fied, a tender conscience in reference to himself, a 
tender sympathy and forbearance toward others, 
entire freedom from bigotry, yet a most holy rover- 



SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENON. 353 

ence toward God, an ardent love of the truth, and 
a jealousy for its purity, glory, and defense ; every 
fruit, and all the graces of the Spirit, in their 
turn, excepting that of hope only. A most extra- 
ordinary nature, a most marvelous development, 
a manifestation of piety, and a growth of holi- 
ness, even in a frozen zone, such as earth has 
rarely, if ever witnessed ; the growth of righteous- 
ness, even where the beams of the Sun of Right- 
eousness were intercepted by a malignant eclipse, 
nearly life-long ! A warm and open Polar Sea, 
and banks of tropical shrubbery and flowers upon 
its borders, amid surrounding ice-mountains, and 
beneath an atmosphere so freezing, that whole 
ships' crews have been rigidly fastened to their 
decks in death, even in the work, of exploration, 
would not be so supernatural a phenomenon. This 
is what God can do, but not man ; grace, even de- 
nied and invisible, but not morality. 

Moreover, there was never, in Cowper's insanity, 
any thing of the ordinary repulsive or terrible 
character of madness, nor any approximation 
thereto ; never any malignity or fierceness toward 
others, but even in the uttermost sullenness of 
gloom, a timidity and meekness ; a harmlessness, 
as divested of the power and the disposition of 
violence and passion, as a crushed rose-bud, or a 
daisy trodden under foot. Hence the singular im- 
propriety and want of truth in that expression of 



354 PORTRAITS OF COWPER. 

Leigh Hunt in regard to Cowper's picture, that it 
developed " a fire fiercer than that either of intel- 
lect or fancy, gleaming from the raised and pro- 
truded eye." If that fierceness was in Komney's 
painting, it was wholly false to the original ; for 
none of his dearest and most intimate friends ever 
saw it, or imagined it, in Cowper's own counte- 
nance ; and it certainly never existed in his mel- 
ancholy. The thing lay wholly in the imagination 
of the critic ; for neither in the mind, nor looking 
out at the eye, was there ever any flashing of such 
a fire ; only a pensive or suffering expression, but 
never a crazy, nor aggressive, nor glaring light. If 
such light were in the portrait, it would be a sure 
test of its untruth, and of the ambitious hand of 
a painter striking at a caricature ; but it is en- 
tirely unlikely that Eomney had any such inten- 
tion or idea. Hayley regarded the portrait as one 
of the most faithful and masterly resemblances he 
ever beheld ; and Cowper thought it strange that 
it should show no marks of his own habitual sor- 
row. Absurd, indeed, it was to speak of a fierce 
fire as gleaming from the eye ; absurd to imagine 
any ground for such a representation in the char- 
acter or habitual expression of the poet. Cowper's 
sonnet to the painter was composed in 1792. 

Eomney ! expert infallibly to trace 
On chart or canvas, not the form alone 
And semblance, but, however faintly shown, 
The mind's impression, too, on every face, 



eomney's portrait. 355 

With strokes that time ought never to erase : 

Thou hast so pencil'd mine, that though I own 

The subject worthless, I have never known 

The artist shining with superior grace. 

But this I mark, that symptoms none of woe 

In thy incomparable work appear : 

"Well 1 I am satisfied it should be so, 

Since, on maturer thought, the cause is clear ; 

For in my looks what sorrow couldst thou see, 

When I was Hayley's guest, and sat to thee ? 

The absurdity of supposing that the painter 
had either detected or portrayed the fire of in- 
sanity in a face, the owner of which was in the 
perfect possession and exercise of the gentlest 
affections, and of a calm and reasoning mind, at 
the time when the portrait was taken, and had 
been for twenty years, with the exception of an 
interval of six months, is exceedingly great. The 
only interval of insanity from 1773 to 1792, the 
time when the portrait was taken, had been in the 
year 1787 ; and even in that attack there does not 
appear to have been any of the glaring of this un- 
natural fire, but simply the lowest depths of men- 
tal despondency and suffering. To suppose that 
the expression of such a transitory interval would 
predominate in Cowper's eye over the habitual 
character of twenty years of peacefulness and 
heavenly affection, would be contrary to all fact 
and reason ; and it is the veriest affectation or 
frenzy of critical discernment to imagine such an 
expression on the canvas. 



356 



ABBOTS PORTRAIT 



Mr. G-riinshaw, indeed, says that there was an air 
of wildness in Komney's portrait of Cowper, ex- 
pressive of a disordered mind, which the shock 
produced by the paralytic attack of Mrs. Unwin 
was rapidly impressing on his countenance. The 
portrait by Abbot was that of his customary and 
more placid features. Now since Abbot's portrait 
was taken more immediately after Mrs. Unwinds 
illness than Komney's, if Cowper's features had 
worn that air of wildness at all, it would most 
likely have been at that time ; in fact, when 
Komney painted him, Mrs. Unwin had received so 
much benefit from the journey to Eartham, that 
Cowper was greatly comforted, and in the very 
letter in which he announced to Lady Hesketh the 
completion of Komney's picture, he says concern- 
ing himself, "I am, without the least dissimula- 
tion, in good health ; my spirits are about as good 
as you have ever seen them ; and if increase of 
appetite and a double portion of sleep be advan- 
tageous, such are the advantages that I have re- 
ceived from this migration. As to that gloominess 
of mind which I have had these twenty years, it 
cleaves to me even here, and, could I be translated 
to Paradise, unless I left my body behind me, 
would cleave to me even there also. It is my 
companion for life, and nothing will ever divorce 
us." 

The wildness in Cowper's face at this time, if 



EXACT RESEMBLANCE. 357 

Romney threw such an expression on the canvas, 
was purely fanciful, and Cowper himself would 
have detected and marked it sooner than any one, 
had there been the fierce fire of insanity glaring 
from the eye. But neither his friends nor himself 
saw any such expression, though all agreed it was 
the most exact resemblance possible. 

In a letter written near this period to Mrs. 
Charlotte Smith the authoress, Cowper gives ex- 
pression to a very beautiful and tender train of 
contemplations awakened in his pensive mind by 
one of her remarks to Hayley. "I was much 
struck," says he, " by an expression in your letter 
to Hayley, where you say that you will endeavor 
to take an interest in green leaves again. This 
seems the sound of my own voice reflected to me 
from a distance, I have so often had the same 
thought and desire. A day scarcely passes at this 
season of the year, when I do not contemplate the 
trees so soon to be stripped, and say, Perhaps I 
shall never see you clothed again. Every year as 
it passes makes this expectation more reasonable ; 
and the year with me can not be very distant, 
when the event will verify it. Well ! may God 
grant us a good hope of arriving in due time, 
where the leaves never fall, and all will be 
right \" 

This was written in the autumn of 1792, and 
only one more Spring ever came, in which that 



358 Lawrence's portrait. 

sensitive Christian poet, who had loved nature 
with such unaffected love, could ever again take 
his wonted interest in green leaves. The last 
years of his and Mrs. Unwin's life were like the 
ominous evolutions of a Greek tragedy, distinctly 
foreboded, and gloomily marching on with the de- 
cision of inexorable fate. 

A year and more after the date of Koinney's 
painting, Lawrence executed another portrait of 
Cowper, in which, if in either of the three, the 
indications of gloom and wildness must have been 
visible, if drawn from nature. For it was at this 
time, October, 1793, that Cowper was in the 
greatest distress between the pressure of his mel- 
ancholy, the burden of engagements which he 
could not fulfill, and his anxiety of mind for poor 
Mrs. Unwin ; yet in Lawrence's picture there was 
not the least trace of the imagined supernatural 
fire. 

Early in November, Hayley paid him another 
visit, and it was the last in which Cowper's 
afflicted reason could enjoy a gleam of happiness. 
It was in reference to this visit that Hayley wrote 
his interesting description of the evils that seemed 
impending over the once cheerful household of his 
dear friend. " My fears for him in every point of 
view were alarmed by his present very singular 
condition. He possessed completely at this period 
all the admirable faculties of his mind, and all the 



HAYLEY AT WESTON. 359 

native tenderness of his heart ; hut there was 
something indescribable in his appearance which 
led me to apprehend that without some signal 
event in his favor, to reanimate his spirits, they 
would gradually sink into hopeless dejection. The 
state of his aged, infirm companion, afforded addi- 
tional ground for increasing solicitude. Her cheer- 
ful and beneficent spirit could hardly resist her 
own accumulated maladies, so far as to preserve 
ability sufficient to watch over the tender health 
of him whom she had watched and guarded so 
long." 

Only two months afterward, in 1794, Cowper 
wrote to his dear friend Eose, saying, " I have just 
ability enough to transcribe, which is all that I 
have to do at present ; God knows that I write at 
this moment under the pressure of sadness not to 
be described." In the course of two months more, 
Hayley was informed by a letter from Mr. Great- 
heed of the deplorable condition of Cowper beneath 
such an increase of his gloom, as almost to deprive 
him of the use of every faculty, threatening in- 
deed a speedy close of life. This letter was dated 
April 8th, 1794, and Hayley immediately on the 
receipt of it hastened to Weston ; but his dear 
friend was so profoundly overwhelmed and op- 
pressed beneath the anxiety and despair produced 
by the physical and mental malady, that he took 
no welcome notice of his coming, nor at any time 



360 HAYLEY AT WESTON. 

could manifest the least sign of pleasure at his 
presence ; although a few months before, nothing on 
earth except the presence of Lady Hesketh, whom 
he loved with as much tenderness as a sister, 
could have given him such delight as Hayley's 
visit. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

COWPER'S COMPLAINT AND JEREMIAH'S. — SINCERITY OF COWPER 
IN EVERY EXPRESSION OF CHRISTIAN FEELING. — LETTER TO MR. 
ROSE. — LETTERS TO UNWIN AND NEWTON. — CHRISTIAN EXPERI- 
ENCE IN SPITE OF DESPAIR — CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY IN OTHERS' 
TRIALS. — POEM ON THE FOUR AGES. — MRS. UNWIN'S ILLNESS 
AND COWPER'S GLOOM. — POEM TO MARY. 

The first eighteen verses of the third chapter 
of the Lamentations of Jeremiah are a most per- 
fect representation of the belief and experience of 
Cowper for the greater part of twenty years. " I 
am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of 
His wrath. He hath led me and brought me into 
darkness, but not into light. Surely, against me 
He is turned ; He turneth His hand against me 
all the day. He hath set me in dark places, as 
they that be dead of old. He hath hedged me 
about that I can not get out ; He hath made my 
chain heavy. Also, when I cry and shout, He 
shutteth out my prayer. He hath filled me with 
bitterness, He hath made me drunken with worm- 
wood. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel- 
stones. He hath covered me with ashes. And 
\6 



362 THE MOURNING PROPHET. 

I said, My strength and my hope are perished from 
the Lord." 

But the misery of Cowper was, that in his case, 
that which, with the afflicted and mourning 
prophet, was the language of grief and of hope- 
lessness in regard to the overwhelming external 
desolations that had overtaken his beloved country 
in God's wrath (and he himself a hopeless sufferer 
in all those calamities), described a personal de- 
spair. The prophet could say, after all this most 
graphic catalogue of his woes, " The Lord is my 
portion, saith my soul ; therefore will I hope in 
Him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for 
Him : to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good 
that a man should both hope and quietly wait for 
the salvation of the Lord. For the Lord will not 
cast off forever ; but though He cause grief, yet 
will He have compassion according to the multi- 
tude of his mercies. I called upon Thy name, 
Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard 
my voice. Thou drewest near in the day that I 
called upon Thee, thou saidst, Fear not. Lord, 
Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul, Thou 
hast redeemed my life." 

But Cowper's inexorable despair was continually 
crying, God is against me ; I am cut off forever 
from the light of the living, from the possibility 
of His mercy. Actum est de te ; periisti : My 
hope is perished from the Lord forever ! And 



HOPE IMPERISHABLE. 363 

often he was compelled to cry out with the Psalm- 
ist, " While I suffer Thy terrors, I am distracted. 
Thy fierce wrath goeth over me, and Thou hast 
afflicted me with all Thy waves." 

Yet never did Cowper's confidence in God's 
goodness fail ; and even through all this thick 
spiritual darkness, he was full of gratitude for the 
providential mercies of his Heavenly Father while 
reason remained ; nor did any Christian ever take 
greater delight in observing and recounting the 
footsteps of God's providence, and the marks of 
His interposing love. He was always ready to say 
with Jeremiah, " It is of the Lord's mercies that 
we are not consumed, because His compassions 
fail not. They are new every morning ; great is 
Thy faithfulness." 

Moreover, we have seen at the bottom of all 
Cowper's complaints some remnant still of hope, 
some persevering conviction, as obstinate as his 
'despair itself, of the possibility that God might 
yet interpose in his behalf, and deliver him from 
what would then and thus be demonstrated to 
have been the affliction of insanity, an imagination 
of a banishment from God, the work of an unset- 
tled reason under the buffetings of malignant 
spiritual foes. And we must bear in mind the 
anxious sincerity and carefulness of Cowper in 
every expression of his feelings, not to transcend 
the limits of his own actual experience in any 



364 CHRISTIAN HOPE. 

Christian sentiment to which he ever gave utter- 
ance. 

The exquisite simplicity and transparency of 
his heart as well as intellect, his freedom from all 
pretense and guile, and from all affectation of any 
kind of ability or attainment which he did not 
possess, are to be remembered in perusing Cowper's 
letters of sympathy with the sorrows of his dearest 
friends. When we find him saying in effect, 
Courage, my brother ! we shall soon rejoin our lost 
one, and many whom we have tenderly loved, 
" our forerunners into a better country," the con- 
solation is so conveyed that we should feel as if it 
were almost a deception, if the writer himself 
were not a partaker of it. Just so, in all those 
sweet allusions now and then in Cowper's letters 
to the grounds of a Christian hope ; they are so 
expressed that it is impossible not to feel assured 
that they do not and can not proceed from a heart 
that feels as if God were an enemy, or believes" 
that its own sins are not and can not be forgiven. 
There is the Christian hope in such expressions, by 
whatever depths of doubt surrounded. Take, for 
instance, the close of a letter, in 1791, to the Eev. 
Walter Bagot. "If God forgive me my sins, 
surely I shall love Him much, for I have much to 
be forgiven. But the quantum need not discour- 
age me, since there is One whose atonement can 
suffice for all." 



CHRISTIAN GRATITUDE. 3b& 

Again, the record of Christian experience in a 
letter to the Kev. Mr. Hurdis, in 1793, is not con- 
sistent with the entire absence of hope, but inti- 
mates both the possession of a personal faith in 
the Lord Jesus, and the experience of deep grati- 
tude for the privilege of being permitted to exer- 
cise it. Cowper is speaking of the effect of ad- 
versity. " Your candid account," says he, " of the 
effect that your afflictions have, both on your spir- 
its and temper, I can perfectly understand, having 
labored much in that fire myself, and perhaps more 
than any other man. It is in such a school, how- 
ever, that we must learn, if we ever truly learn it, 
the natural depravity of the human heart, and of 
our own in particular, together with the conse- 
quence that necessarily follows such wretched 
premises ; our indispensable need of the atone- 
ment, and our inexpressible obligations to Him 
who made it. This reflection can not escape a 
thinking mind, looking back to those ebullitions 
of fretfulness and impatience to which it has 
yielded in a season of great affliction." 

Our inexpressible obligations. It is clear that 
Cowper felt them personally ; but how could this 
have been, had he really and truly believed himself 
shut out, by a solitary and anomalous decree, from 
the eternal benefit of the atonement ? Here, 
then, an unacknowledged, and almost unconscious, 
yet imperishable hope, contradicted the logic of 



366 LIFE IN A VINEGAR BOTTLE. 



his despair, as profoundly as his despair itself 
contradicted the assurances of Scripture and of 
reason. 

" Every proof of attention to a man who lives 
in a vinegar bottle," said Cowper to his friend Mr. 
Unwin, "is welcome from his friends on the out- 
side of it." Even in this vinegar bottle, Cowper 
could make merry with the surrounding world, as 
seen through the prism of his own melancholy. 
He told Mr. Unwin, in this same letter, that he 
forgave Dr. Johnson all the trivial and supersti- 
tious dotage in his diary, for the sake of one piece 
of instruction, namely, never to banish hope en- 
tirely, because it is the cordial of life, although it 
be the greatest flatterer in the world. He adds, 
in regard to his own case, " such a measure of hope 
as may not endanger my peace by a disappoint- 
ment, I would wish to cherish upon every subject 
in which I am interested. A cure, however, and 
the only one, for all the irregularities of hope and 
fear, is found in submission to the will of Grod. 
Happy they that have it." 

He told Newton, during that same year, 1785, that 
within eight months he had had his hopes, though 
they had been of short duration, and cut off like the 
foam upon the waters. " Some previous adjust- 
ments, indeed, are necessary, before a lasting ex- 
pectation of comfort can have place in me. There 
are persuasions in my mind, which either entirely 



LETTERS TO NEWTON, 367 

forbid the entrance of hope, or, if it enter, imme- 
diately eject it. They are incompatible with any 
such inmate, and must be turned out themselves, 
before so desirable a guest can possibly have secure 
possession. This, you say, will be done. It may 
be, but it is not done yet, nor has a single step 
in the course of God's dealings with me been taken 
toward it. If I mend, no creature ever mended 
so slowly that recovered at last. I am like a slug, 
or snail, that has fallen into a deep well ; slug as 
he is, he performs his descent with an alacrity pro- 
portioned to his weight ; but he does not crawl up 
again quite so fast. Mine was a rapid plunge, but 
my return to daylight, if I am indeed returning, 
is leisurely enough." 

Cowper then beautifully refers to the value 
which he set upon Newton's letters, and to the 
circumstances under which the two friends first 
knew each other. " Your connection with me was 
the work of God. The kine that went up with 
the ark from Bethshemesh left what they loved 
behind them, in obedience to an impression which 
to them was perfectly dark and unintelligible. 
Your journey to Huntingdon was not less wonder- 
ful. He, indeed, who sent you, knew well where- 
fore, but you knew not." He then speaks of his 
own change under the gloom that had afflicted 
him, and of the constant affection of his friends. 
" I can say nothing of myself at present ; but this 



368 FREEDOM AND FRANKNESS. 

I can venture to foretell, that should the restora- 
tion, of which my friends assure me, obtain, I shall 
undoubtedly love those who have continued to love 
me, even in a state of transition from my former 
self, much more than ever. I doubt not that 
Nebuchadnezzar had friends in his prosperity ; all 
kings have many. But when his nails became like 
eagles' claws, and he ate grass like an ox, I sup- 
pose he had few to pity him." 

In one of his letters to Mr. Kose, in 1783, Cowper 
apologized at the close of it for the sermonizing 
strain in which he said he had written it. But he 
added, " I always follow the leading of my uncon- 
strained thoughts when I write to a friend, be they 
grave or otherwise." At the beginning of this let- 
ter, Cowper excused himself for not answering Mr. 
Rose's epistle sooner, and told him that an unan- 
swered letter troubled his conscience in some de- 
gree like a crime, and that he approached him 
once more in the correspondence not altogether 
despairing of forgiveness. If this letter had been 
written to Newton instead of Mr. Kose, Southey 
would probably have taken the opportunity to 
renew his insinuation that Cowper was always ser- 
monizing to Newton, and went to his correspond- 
ence with him as unwillingly as if were going to 
confession. This letter to Mr. Rose is a complete 
answer to so dishonorable an imputation. Cowper 
never wrote, never would write, under constraint, 



FREEDOM AND FRANKNESS. 369 

much less would he sermonize to please others, 
when his heart did not dictate the strain of re- 
mark. His correspondence with Newton is as free 
and familiar as with any of his friends, and it was 
always unaffectedly and delightfully easy with 
them all. 

One of his letters to Newton beautifully de- 
scribes the insupportable irksomeness of a state of 
confinement or restraint. Other letters equally 
manifest his independence and frankness, and the 
indignation with which he could repel a false ac- 
cusation. " I could not endure the room in which 
I now write," says he, " were I conscious that the 
door were locked. In less than five minutes I 
should feel myself a prisoner, though I can spend 
hours in it, under an assurance that I may leave it 
when I please, without experiencing any tedium at 
all. It was for this reason, I suppose, that the 
yacht was always disagreeable to me. I make 
little doubt but Noah was glad when he was en- 
larged from the ark ; and we are sure that Jonah 
was when he came out of the fish ; and so was I 
to escape from the good sloop Harriet." 

All the efforts of Cowper's original genius were 

spontaneous efforts, and even the translation of 

Homer was a great work, into which he fell as by 

accident, while pursuing a mere experiment, and 

afterward continued it to the end, as a ship by 

stress of weather must sometimes run before the 
16* 



370 THE MILTON IAN TRAP. 

gale all the way across an ocean, unable to put 
into a harbor. When he had finished that work, 
his mind once more reverted frequently and with 
fondness to the happier employment more con- 
genial with his tastes, and suggested by his in- 
evitable consciousness of renewed poetical power. 

Under these circumstances, it was much to be 
regretted that any new engagements with Milton 
or Homer should have been laid upon him. While 
harassed by obligations, which, once assumed, 
rested with a weight upon his conscience, he felt 
as if a lasso had been thrown over his genius, and 
he had become a slave. He longed to be engaged 
in the work of original poetical composition. 
" How often do I wish in the course of every day/' 
says he, in a letter to Hayley, in 1792, " that I 
could be employed once more in poetry, and how 
often, of course, that this Miltonian trap had 
never caught me ! The year '92 shall stand 
chronicled in my remembrance as the most melan- 
choly that I have ever known, except the few 
weeks that I spent at Eartham ; and such it has 
been, principally because, being engaged to Milton, 
I felt myself no longer free for any other engage- 
ment. That ill-fated work, impracticable in itself, 
has made every thing else impracticable." 

Again, to Hayley, in 1793: "No! I shall 
neither do, nor attempt any thing of consequence 
more, unless my poor Mary get better ; nor even 



THE FOUR AGES. 371 

then (unless it should please God to give me an- 
other nature) in concert with any man ; I could 
not, even with rny own father or brother, were 
they now alive. Small game must serve me at 
present, and till I have clone with Homer and 
Milton, a sonnet, or some such matter, must con- 
tent me. The utmost that I aspire to, and 
Heaven knows with how feeble a hope, is to write 
at some better opportunity, and when my hands 
are free, ' The Four Ages/ Thus have I opened 
my heart unto thee/' 

The idea of a poem on the Four Ages, from the 
first moment of its suggestion, seems to have filled 
the mind and heart of Cowper with delight. 
Even beneath the pressure of sorrow and despair, 
he commenced it in a manner so sublime, and with 
execution so perfect, that if it had been com- 
pleted in the same style, it would have been in no 
respect inferior to "The Task," but probably more 
profound and grand in thought and imagery. He 
had a multitude of small pieces, from which he 
intended to make a selection, and add them to the 
Four Ages in one volume. Afterward he con- 
sented to a proposition of Hayley to unite with 
him in the authorship of the proposed poem, and 
the two distinguished artists, Lawrence and Flax- 
man, were to have furnished the work with the most 
exquisite possible designs. Cowper told Hayley 
that if it pleased G-od to afford him health, spirits, 






372 THE FOUR AGES. 

ability, and leisure, he would not fail to devote 
them all to the production of his quota of " The 
Four Ages." 

The conception of this poem was suggested to 
Cowper by the Kev. Mr. Buchanan, a clergyman 
at Kavenstone, near Weston. Having become 
personally acquainted with Cowper, he wrote to 
him, in the spring of 1793, such a plan of a pro- 
posed poem on the four seasons of human life, in- 
fancy, youth, manhood, and old age, that Cowper 
was filled with admiration, both of the sketch and 
the subject. Mr. Buchanan rightly judged that it 
would be peculiarly suited to the genius, taste, and 
piety of Cowper, affording the happiest possible 
field for the exercise of all his exquisite sensibili- 
ties, his powers of imagination, wit, and humor, 
his playful affections, his early knowledge of the 
world, his attainments in religion, and the wisdom 
he had gained from experience. If Lady Austen's 
suggestion of the Sofa could call forth such happy 
trains of thought, feeling, and imagery from Cow- 
per's mind, what might not have been expected 
from a proposition fraught with so much thought 
and beauty, the intimated outlines of which so 
greatly charmed the poet that he immediately ad- 
dressed his friendly correspondent the following 
letter : 

" My Dear Sir — You have sent me a beautiful 
poem, wanting nothing but meter. I would ip- 



THE FOUR AGES. 373 

Heaven that you would give to it that requisite 
yourself ; for he who could make the sketch, can 
not but be well qualified to finish. But if you 
will not, I will ; provided always, nevertheless, 
that God gives me ability, for it will require no 
common share to do justice to your conceptions." 

But Cowper soon began to fear, as he said, 
" that all his own ages would be exhausted" before 
he should find leisure to engage in such a compo- 
sition ; and he regretted more than ever the en- 
gagement that had bound him down to Homer 
and Milton. It was with this feeling, and with 
sorrow that his powers could not have been em- 
ployed in work more positively Christian in its 
character, that he composed the beautiful sonnet 
to " his kinsman as a son beloved," the Kev. Mr. 
Johnson, who had presented him with a bust of 
Homer, " the sculptured form of his old favorite 
bard." It awakened in him both joy and grief. 

The grief is this, that sunk in Homer's mine, 
I lose my precious years, now soon to fail ! 

Handling his gold, which, howsoe'er it shine, 

Proves dross when balanced in the Christian scale ! 

Be wiser, thou ! like our forefather Donne, 

Seek heavenly wealth, and work for G-od alone ! 

At a still later date, writing to Hayley, he says, 
in regard to his promised labors on Milton, he feels 
like a man who has sprained his wrist, and dreads 



•374 TASK- WORK, 

to use it. " The consciousness that there is so 
much to do, and nothing done, is a burden I am 
not able to bear. Milton especially is my griev- 
ance, and I might almost as well be haunted by 
his ghost, as goaded with continual reproaches for 
neglecting him/' 

Writing to Hayley, in the spring of 1793, he 
says : " Sometimes I am seriously almost crazed 
with the multiplicity of the matters before me, 
and the little or no time I have for them ; and 
sometimes I repose myself after the fatigue of that 
distraction on the pillow of despair ; a pillow 
which has often served me in the time of need, 
and is become, by frequent use, if not very com- 
fortable, at least convenient. So reposed, I laugh 
at the world and say, Yes, you may gape, and ex- 
pect both Homer and Milton from me, but I '11 be 
hanged if ever you get them/' 

The combination of such tasks with the care of 
his dear helpless friend, and his extreme anxiety 
and watchfulness on her account, proved entirely 
too much for Cowper's nervous system. It was 
overtasked before he was aware. 

Spealdng of Mrs. Unwin's long-continued watch- 
fulness over Cowper's health, and affectionate min- 
istrations to his comfort, Hayley described in 
tender and guarded language the change pro- 
duced in her by the effects of paralysis ; a change, 
the contemplation of which, undoubtedly, was one 



CARE OF MRS. UNWIN. 375 

exasperating cause of the final attack of Cowpers 
malady. Hayley's last visit to Cowper, that could 
afford any pleasure, was only two months before 
that attack, and the sight of Mrs. Unwinds in- 
creasing helplessness, both physical and mental, 
was very painful, the more so, as it was then im- 
possible to withdraw Cowper from the constant 
care and anxiety which in his turn he endured for 
her. " Imbecility of body and mind," says Hay- 
ley, " must gradually render this tender and heroic 
woman unfit for the charge which she had so 
laudably sustained. The signs of such imbecility 
were beginning to be painfully visible ; nor can 
nature present a spectacle more truly pitiable than 
imbecility in such a shape, eagerly grasping for 
dominion, which it knows not either how to retain 
or how to relinquish." 

How Cowper himself felt in the sight of Mrs. 
Unwinds increasing infirmities and helplessness, is 
made affectingly clear in that most pathetic poem 
addressed to her at this time, with the simple 
title, " To Mary." 

The twentieth year is well-nigh past, 

Since first our sky was overcast, 

Ah, would that this might be the last I 

My Mary I 

Thy spirits have a fainter flow, 
I see thee daily weaker grow ; 
'T was my distress that brought thee low, 
My Mary ! 



376 



POEM TO MARY. 



Thy needles, once a shining store, 
For my sake restless heretofore, 
Now rust disused, and shine no more, 

My Mary I 

For though thou gladly wouldst fulfill 
The same kind office for me still 
Thy sight now seconds not thy will, 

My Mary ! 

But well thou play'dst the housewife's part ; 
And all thy threads with magic art, 
Have wound themselves about this heart, 

My Mary ! 

Thy indistinct expressions seem 
Like language uttered in a dream ; 
Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme, 

My Mary! 

Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, 
Are still more lovely in my sight, 
Than golden beams of orient light, 

My Mary ! 

For could I view nor them, nor thee, 
What sight worth seeing could I see ? 
The sun would rise in vain for me, 

My Mary! 

Partakers of thy sad decline, 
Thy hands their little force resign ; 
Yet gently pressed, press gently mine, 

My Mary! 

Such feebleness of limbs thou prov'st, 
That now at every step thou mov'st 
Upheld by two ; — yet still thou lov'st, 

My Mary! 

And still to love, though pressed with ill, 
In wint'ry age to feel no chill, 
"With me is to be lovely still, 

My Mary ! 



A DISTRESSING YEAR. 377 

But, ah ! by constant heed I know, 
How oft the sadness that I show, 
Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, 

My Mary! 

And should my future lot be cast 
"With much resemblance of the past, 
Thy worn-out heart will break at last, 

My Mary ! 

The year 1792, after his return from his visit to 
Hayley, was indescribably distressing to him. 
" In vain," says he, " I pray to be delivered from 
these distressing experiences ; they are only mul- 
tiplied upon me the more, and the more pointed. 
I feel myself, in short, the most unpitied, the most 
unprotected, and the most unacknowledged out- 
cast of the human race." Yet there was one 
transitory interval of happiness, unspeakably pre- 
cious, which he noticed in a letter to Newton, as 
"a manifestation of God's presence vouchsafed to 
me a few days since ; transient, indeed, and dimly 
seen through a mist of many fears and troubles, 
but sufficient to convince me, at least, while the 
Enemy's power is a little restrained, that God has 
not cast me off forever/' 

This interval is described more particularly in a 
letter to Mr. Teedon. " On Saturday, you saw me 
a little better than I had been when I wrote last ; 
but the night following brought with it an uncom- 
mon deluge of distress, such as entirely over- 
whelmed and astonished me. My horrors were 
not to be described. But on Sunday, while I 



378 INTERVAL OF PRAYER. 

walked with Mrs. Unwin and my cousin in the 
orchard, it pleased God to enable me once more 
to approach Him in prayer, and I prayed silently 
for every thing that lay nearest my heart with a 
considerable degree of liberty. Nor did I let slip 
the occasion of praying for you. This experience 
I take to be a fulfillment of those words, c The ear 
of the Lord is open to them that fear Him, and He 
will hear their cry/ And ever since I was favored 
with that spiritual freedom to make my requests 
known to God, I have enjoyed some quiet, though 
not uninterrupted by threatenings of the Enemy." 
But still the gloom deepened. Sometimes he 
described himself even to Hayley, as " hunted by 
spiritual hounds in the night-season/' " Prayer I 
know is made for me/' says he to Mr. Newton, " and 
sometimes with great enlargement of heart by 
those who offer it ; and in this circumstance con- 
sists the only evidence I can find, that God is still 
favorably mindful of me, and has not cast me off 
forever." " As to myself, I have always the same 
song to sing, well in body, but sick in spirit, sick, 
nigh unto death. 

Seasons return, but not to me returns 
God, or the sweet approach of heavenly day, 
Or sight of cheering truth, or pardon sealed, 
Or joy, or hope, or Jesus' face divine, 
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark , 

I could easily set my complaint to Milton's tune, 
and accompany him through the whole passage, on 



INTERVAL OF PRAYER. 379 

the subject of a blindness more deplorable than 
his : but time fails me." 

Now we do not know of any thing more tenderly- 
affecting in Cowper's whole history, nor more illus- 
trative of a grateful and affectionate heart, than 
the interval of hope and prayer above recorded, 
and the use which Cowper made of it. Nor did I 
let slip the occasion of praying for you. Cowper 
thought that it was in answer to Mr. Teedon's 
earnest interceding prayers, in part at least, that 
he owed that celestial freedom (and who shall pre- 
sume to say that it was not ?), and with grateful 
love he asked God's blessing on his humble ben- 
efactor, even amid his own sufferings. It is an 
exquisitely beautiful proof how truly Cowper's 
spiritual life was hid with Christ in God, even 
when he thought it had expired in darkness. If 
all of Cowper's correspondence with Mr. Teedon 
had been the means of only this incident, and its 
record, we should rejoice in it as a lovely revela- 
tion of Cowper's character, and a sweet evidence 
of his communion with God, even then, when he 
thought himself cut off from hope and Heaven. 
Yet this is the correspondence, and the interchange 
of prayer, on which Southey thought fit to expend 
his ridicule ; and some have followed in the same 
strain ! Eightly considered, the record is adapted 
to fill the mind only with admiration and with 
reverential praise. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

FINAL AND FATAL RECURRENCE OF COWPER'S MALADY. — LADY 
HESKETH'S AFFECTIONATE CARE. — DEPARTURE OF COWPER AND 
MRS. UNWIN FROM WESTON. — MRS. UNWTN'S DEATH. — COWPER'S 
LETTERS AND TERRORS. — THE PROGRESS OF HIS DESPAIR. — LAST 
LETTER TO NEWTON. — LAST ORIGINAL COMPOSITION. — THE CAST- 
AWAY. — RELEASE AND DELIVERANCE. 

In the year 1794, when the dreadful malady in- 
creased upon Cowper with all its early force, his 
beloved cousin, Lady Hesketh, hastened to his 
care. She found him in a most deplorable condi- 
tion, and the description of the circumstances in 
her letters makes us rather wonder that he had 
not been sooner and more completely overwhelmed. 
Mrs. Unwin had sunk, after her last attack of the 
palsy, into second childhood. Hayley says : " The 
distress of heart that he felt in beholding the cruel 
change in a companion so justly dear to him, con- 
spiring with his constitutional melancholy, was 
gradually undermining the exquisite faculties of 
his mind." He then refers to Lady Hesketh's 
cheerful and affectionate kindness, as an angel of 
mercy, " who now devoted herself to the superin- 



LADY HESKETH'S LETTER. 381 

tendence of a house, whose two interesting inhab- 
itants were rendered, by age and trouble, almost 
incapable of attending to the ordinary offices of life. 
Those only who have lived with the superannuated 
and the melancholy can properly appreciate the 
value of such magnanimous friendship, or perfectly 
apprehend what personal sufferings it must cost a 
frame of compassionate sensibility/" 

Lady Hesketh, after noting that this last inter- 
val of Cowper's dreadful dejection began in the 
month of which he always lived in terror, that of 
January, says that she found him on her arrival 
" the absolute nurse of this poor lady Mrs. Unwin, 
who can not move out of her chair without help, 
nor walk across the room unless supported by two 
people ; added to this, her voice is almost wholly 
unintelligible, and as their house was repairing all 
summer, he was reduced, poor soul, for many 
months, to have no conversation but Iters. You 
must imagine, sir, that his situation was terrible 
indeed ; and the more, as he was deprived, by 
means of this poor lady, of all his wonted exer- 
cises, both mental and bodily, as she did not 
choose he should leave her for a moment, or use a 
pen, or a book except when he read to her, which 
is an employment that always, I know, fatigues 
and hurts him, and which therefore my arrival re- 
lieved him from. I thought him, on the whole, 



382 cowper's removal. 

better than I expected he would have been in such 
a situation" 

In another letter, Lady Hesketh described the 
increasing force of Cowper's malady, and the ter- 
rors that were gathering around him. "He is 
now come to expect daily, and even hourly, that 
he shall be carried away ; — and he kept in his 
room from the time breakfast was over till four 
o'clock on Sunday last, in spite of repeated mes- 
sages from Mrs. Unwin, because he was afraid 
somebody would take possession of his bed, and 
prevent his lying down on it any more !" 

In July, 1795, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin were 
both removed from Weston to North Tuddenham, 
under the affectionate care of Mr. Johnson, and 
from thence, in August, to Mundesley, on the coast 
of Norfolk. While at Tuddenham, Cowper and 
Johnson walked over together to the village of 
Mattishall, on a visit to Mrs. Bodham, the poet's 
cousin. Cowper's own portrait by Abbot was 
there, taken at Weston in July, 1792, when Cow- 
per and Mrs. Unwin were on the eve of their jour- 
ney to Mr. Hayley's, at Eartham. He was then 
rilled with trembling apprehensions on her account, 
and beginning to be harassed with a thousand 
anxieties about the pilgrimage of a hundred and 
twelve miles ; hunted, as he told Hayley, by spir- 
itual hounds in the night season, and scared with 
dreaming visions more terrific than ever. Yet 



POET RAIT BY ABBOT. 383 

nothing of such terror was imprinted by day upon 
his mild and pensive countenance, and the portrait 
by Abbot was a most successful effort. Every 
creature that saw it was astonished at the resem- 
blance. Cowper wrote Hayley that Sam's boy 
bowed to it, and Beau, his dog, walked up to it, 
wagging his tail as he went, aud evidently show- 
ing that he acknowledged its likeness to his 
master. 

Now it is a most impressive sign of the acute- 
ness of Cowper's mental distress, that, notwith- 
standing the sadness and dejection of his state 
when this picture was taken, it was, by comparison 
with his present darkness and despair, a season of 
most enviable light and enjoyment. When his 
gaze rested on the portrait at Mrs. Bodham's house, 
he clasped his hands, according to Hayley's ac- 
count, in a paroxysm of pain, and uttered a vehe- 
ment wish that his present sensations might be 
such as they were when that picture was painted ! 

While at Mundesley, Cowper wrote a single let- 
ter to Mr. Buchanan, the only effort he had been 
able to make, even in epistolary correspondence 
with his dearest friends (except Lady Hesketh) for 
a considerable interval. He longed to hear some- 
thing from his beloved home at Weston, and closed 
his letter with a request, most tenderly illustrating 
the strength of his home affections and sensibili- 
ties. " Tell me if my poor birds are living ! I 



384 COWPER AT DUNHAM. 

never see the herbs I used to give them without a 
recollection of them, and sometimes am ready to 
gather them, forgetting that I am not at home." 

In 1796, the two invalids resided with Mr. 
Johnson at Dunham Lodge, whence in September 
they again visited the sea-side at Mundesley, but 
in October retired to Mr. Johnson's house in Dun- 
ham for the winter. There Mrs. Unwin died, at 
the age of seventy-two ; but the extreme de- 
pression of spirits produced by Cowper's malady 
prevented him entirely from the experience of that 
distress and anguish, with which such an event 
would, in a state of health and hope, have over- 
whelmed him. From the day of her death, he 
never mentioned her name, and seemed not even 
to retain the remembrance of such a person ever 
having existed. He continued under the same de- 
pression through the year 1797, but was persuaded 
by the affectionate and winning entreaties of his 
young kinsman to renew his labors on the revisal 
of his Homer, notwithstanding the pressure of his 
malady. The year 1798 passed away with but 
little variation in his state, and by the 8th of 
March, 1799, he had completed the revisal of the 
Odyssey, and the next morning wrote part of a 
new preface. But this was his last continuous in- 
tellectual effort, although he wrote one or two 
gloomy letters, and one more original poem. 

The perusal of the letters (few, and despairing 



SUFFERING UN DESCRIBED. 385 

even to incoherence) which he wrote to Lady Hes- 
keth, from 1795 to 1798, fills the mind with 
amazement that he could in such a state apply 
himself to any intellectual occupation. We also 
admire, with Hayley, the tender and ingenious as- 
siduity of Cowper's young kinsman, under whose 
care these melancholy years were passed, that 
could engage in such effort a being so hopelessly 
depressed. "Even a stranger may consider it a 
strong proof of his tender dexterity in soothing 
and guiding the afflicted poet, that he was able to 
engage him steadily to pursue and finish the revisal 
and correction of his Homer during a long period 
of bodily and mental sufferings, when his troubled 
mind recoiled from all intercourse with his most 
intimate friends, and labored under a morbid ab- 
horrence of all cheerful exertion." 

These letters to Lady Hesketh also let us into 
the knowledge of sufferings which Cowper never 
described, nor attempted to recount to any mortal 
in the former attacks of his distressing malady. 
Those attacks had been so sudden and so over- 
whelming, that he could not put pen to paper, nor 
indeed endure any communication, even with his 
dearest friends, and he never could bring himself 
to any detail of what he passed through. But 
this final attack was more gradual, and was not so 
absolute, did not so entirely plunge him beyond 
the reach of anv sympathetic voice ; and the few 
17 



386 LETTERS TO LADY HE8KETH. 

letters he undertook to Lady Hesketh really do 
more than any thing else toward unvailing the en- 
tanglement of infernal delusions, that lay like 
knotted snakes at the bottom of those depths 
down which his afflicted reason had been flung. 

The first of these sad and singular records was 
at Mundesley, where by the sea-shore Cowper had 
loved to wander in his earlier days, and had ex- 
pressed to his friends the sublime impressions pro- 
duced by the sight of the ocean, and the softly 
soothing melancholy into which the sound of the 
breaking billows had often composed his thoughts. 
But now the wildest storm upon the sea was 
rapture in comparison with the anguish and deso- 
lating apprehensions that filled his soul. " The 
most forlorn of beings," says he, " I tread a shore 
under the burden of infinite despair that I once 
trod all cheerfulness and joy. I view every vessel 
that approaches the coast with an eye of jealousy 
and fear, lest it arrive with a commission to seize 
me. But my insensibility, which you say is a mys- 
tery to you, because it seems incompatible with 
such fear, has the effect of courage, and enables 
me to go forth, as if on purpose to place myself in 
the way of danger. The cliff is here of a height 
that it is terrible to look down from ; and yester- 
day evening, by moonlight, I paused sometimes 
within a foot of the edge of it, from which to have 
fallen would probably have been to be dashed in 



LETTERS TO LADY HESKETH. 387 

pieces. But though to have been dashed in pieces 
would perhaps have been best for me, I shrunk 
from the precipice, and am waiting to be dashed 
in pieces by other means. At two miles' distance 
on the coast is a solitary pillar of rock, that the 
crumbling cliff has left at the high-water mark. 
I have visited it twice, and have found it an em- 
blem of myself. Torn from my natural connec- 
tions, I stand alone, and expect the storm that 
shall displace me." 

" I have no expectation that I shall ever see 
you more, though Samuel assures me that I shall 
visit Weston again, and that you will meet me 
there. My terrors, when I left it, would not per- 
mit me to say — Farewell, forever — which now I 
do ; wishing, but vainly wishing, to see you yet 
once more, and equally wishing that I could now 
as confidently, and as warmly as once I could, sub- 
scribe myself affectionately yours ; but every feel- 
ing that could warrant the doing it, has, as you 
too well know, long since forsaken the bosom of 

" W. C." 

This was written in August, 1795. In Septem- 
ber there is a renewal of the same despairing 
monody, and an evident perplexity of mind in 
vainly striving to penetrate the mystery of his 
fate, which it is truly affecting to witness. " I 
shall never see Weston more. I have been tossed 



388 LETTERS TO LADY HESKETH. 

like a ball into a far country, from which there is 
no rebound for me. There, indeed, I lived a life 
of infinite despair, and such is my life in Norfolk. 
Such, indeed, it would be in any given spot upon 
the face of the globe ; but to have passed the 
little time that remained to me there, was the de- 
sire of my heart. My heart's desire, however, has 
been always frustrated in every thing that it ever 
settled on, and by means that have rendered my 
disappointments inevitable. When I left Weston, 
I despaired of reaching Norfolk, and now that I 
have reached Norfolk, I am equally hopeless of 
ever reaching Weston more. What a lot is mine ! 
Why was existence given to a creature that might 
possibly, and would probably become wretched in 
the degree that I have been so ? and whom mis- 
ery such as mine was almost sure to overwhelm in 
a moment. But the question is vain. I existed 
by a decree from which there was no appeal, and 
on terms the most tremendous, because unknown 
to, and even unsuspected by me ; difficult to be 
complied with, had they been foreknown, and un- 
foreknown, impracticable. Of this truth, I have 
no witness but my own experience ; a witness, 
whose testimony will not be admitted. * * * I 
remain the forlorn and miserable being I was when 
I wrote last." 

A few months after this letter, he has evidently, 
in January, 1796, gone down a few fathoms deeper 



DEFINITE DELUSIONS. 389 

in this tremendous gloom. Yet the manner in 
which he writes concerning these experiences has 
something in it, notwithstanding his assertion of 
the certainty of his dreadful doom, like the air of 
one who half suspects himself of being in a trance 
or dream. It is at least so far unreal, that he per- 
plexes himself about it ; and eveiy advance into a 
deeper darkness makes him perceive that in the 
preceding darkness there was light. The idea that 
Lady Hesketh has described in one of her letters 
as possessing him, that he was to be suddenly and 
bodily carried away to a place of torment, haunted 
him more and more : it was but the more definite 
converging and concentration of that indefinable, 
anxious, and ominous foreboding of the future, 
under which he had so often described himself to 
Newton and other dear friends, in deeply inter- 
esting letters, as borne down beneath a weight of 
apprehension that almost rendered fife intolerable. 
" I seem to myself," he said to Newton, in 1792, 
"to be scrambling always in the dark, among 
rocks and precipices, without a guide, but with an 
enemy ever at my heels prepared to push me 
headlong." 

So long as the delusion was general, Cowper was. 
sane, though beneath such a weight of suffering 
from the slow nervous and mental fever of his 
gloom. But in proportion as the delusion took a 
definite form, his reason gave way before it, though 



390 PROCESS OF INSANITY. 

his senses were continued to him, only, as he im- 
agined, that he might look forward to the worst. 
"We see the. process of his insanity in these letters 
with a terrible distinctness : he himself, the victim, 
describing the symptoms and experiences step after 
step, till he can write no more, till we lose sight 
of him in the darkness, and can only imagine, 
what more than is related, his sensitive nature may 
have suffered, before the Kedeemer, who was al- 
ways with him, gave him an eternal deliverance. 
What David, amid the distraction of his terrors, 
could say, was not less true of Cowper, even 
when despair was too absolute to admit of his 
believing the consolation, " When my spirit was 
overwhelmed within me, then Thou knewest my 
path !" 

He says to Lady Hesketh, under date of Jan- 
uary 22, 1796 : "I have become daily and hourly 
worse ever since I left Mundesley ; then I had 
something like a gleam of hope allowed me, that 
possibly my life might be granted to me for a lon- 
ger time than I had been used to suppose, though 
only on the dreadful terms of accumulating future 
misery on myself, and for no other reason ; but 
even that hope has long since forsaken me, and I 
now consider this letter as the warrant of my own 
dreadful end ; as the fulfillment of a word heard 
in better days, at least six-and-twenty years ago. 
A word which to have understood at the time 



INVOLUTIONS OF DESPAIB. 391 

when it reached me, would have been, at least 
might have been, a happiness indeed to me ; but 
my cruel destiny denied me the privilege of under- 
standing any thing, that, in the horrible moment 
came winged with my immediate destruction, might 
have served to aid me. You know my story far 
better than I am able to relate it. Infinite de- 
spair is a sad prompter. I expect that in six days' 
time, at the latest, I shall no longer foresee, but 
feel, the accomplishment of all my fears. Oh, lot 
of unexampled misery incurred in a moment ! 
Oh, wretch ! to whom death and life are alike im- 
possible ! Most miserable at present in this, that 
being thus miserable, I have my senses continued 
to me, only that I may look forward to the worst. 
It is certain, at least, that I have them for no other 
purpose, and but very imperfectly, even for this ! 
My thoughts are like loose and dry sand, which 
the closer it is grasped, slips the sooner away. Mr. 
Johnson reads to me, but I lose every other sen- 
tence through the inevitable wanderings of my 
mind, and experience, as I have these two years, 
the same shattered mode of thinking on every sub- 
ject, and on all occasions. If I seem to write with 
more connection, it is only because the gaps do 
not appear. Adieu ! — I shall not be here to re- 
ceive your answer, neither shall I ever see you 
more. Such is the expectation of the most des- 
perate and most miserable of all beings." 



392 



FIRST AND LAST CRISIS. 



Now if the readers of this letter will turn back 
to the description given of Cowper's state in his 
first dread conflict bordering on insanity, when he 
wished for madness as a relief from what to him 
seemed the worse misery of the dreaded public 
examination, for which he knew himself to be 
unfitted, there will be found a singular analogy 
between this latter crisis of Cowper's malady and 
the first. The cycle seemed to have been run, 
and he had- come round to the point where he 
started. In both cases, he seemed to himself to 
have possession of his senses, only that he might 
know and calculate more certainly his coming- 
doom. But in the first case, there was no awak- 
ened and regenerated conscience, and under the 
pressure of his misery he rushed madly to the 
purpose of self-destruction, bracing himself against 
whatever he might meet in the future world. Then, 
when conscience was roused and goaded into fury 
by the frustrated attempt at self-murder, it was 
her scorpion sting that inflicted the misery, and 
produced the gloom, in which he was buried till 
the face of Christ was revealed to him, and he re- 
ceived grace to believe. 

But into the last crisis and conflict the element 
of an angry conscience did not once enter, nor of 
a rebellious will. He lay as still and submissive 
as a weaned child, though the subject at the same 
time of such dreadful despair, and of such dis- 



FIRST AND LAST CRISIS. 393 

torting and maddening delusions about the purposes 
of God in regard to him. If language like the 
outcries of Job sometimes gave utterance to his 
passionate grief, and he was almost ready to curse 
his day, yet he never questioned God's righteous- 
ness ; nay, at times the very madness of the in- 
sanity was in this imagination, that God's truth 
and righteousness required his destruction. It is 
singularly interesting to compare the two ex- 
tremes ; the first, when he entered into his in- 
sanity from a careless and impenitent heart, and 
irreligious life ; the last, when from a life of faith, 
patience, submission, meekness, prayer, and inces- 
sant effort after God, and with a conscience beyond 
question sprinkled by atoning blood, he went down 
for the last time into the same dreadful chaos and 
gloom, unirradiated by one gleam of hope, yet on 
the very verge of Heaven, immediately to emerge 
into its eternal light and glory ! 

Under date of February 19, 1796, Cowper again 
wrote to Lady Hesketh, in the same strain. 
" Could I address you as I used to do, with what 
delight should I begin this letter ! But that de- 
light, and every other sensation of the kind, has 
long since forsaken me forever. * * * All my 
themes of misery may be summed in one word. 
He who made me, regrets that ever He did. Many 
years have passed since I learned this terrible truth 

from Himself, and the interval has been spent ac- 
17* 



394 DREAD OF DESERTION. 

eordingly. Adieu — I shall write to you no more. 
I am promised months of continuance here, and 
should be somewhat less a wretch in my present 
feelings could I credit the promise, but effectual 
care is taken that I shall not. The night contra- 
dicts the day, and I go down the torrent of time 
into the gulf that I have expected to plunge into 
so long. A few hours remain, but among those 
few, not one is found, a part of which I shall ever 
employ in writing to you again. Once more, 
therefore, adieu, and adieu to the pen forever. I 
suppress a thousand agonies, to add only, 

" W. 0." 

It is a most affecting picture which is given at 
this time of Cowper's desolate and trembling state, 
and of the fearful apprehensions that beset him, 
by his kinsman Mr. Johnson, when he tells us that 
" the tender spirit of Cowper clung exceedingly to 
those about him, and seemed to be haunted with 
a continual dread that they would leave him alone 
in his solitary mansion. Sunday, therefore, was a 
day of more than ordinary apprehension to him, 
as the furthest of his kinsman's churches being 
fifteen miles from the Lodge, he was necessarily 
absent during the whole of the Sabbath. On these 
occasions, it was the constant practice of the de- 
jected poet to listen frequently on the steps of the 
hall-door for the barking of dogs at a tarm-house, 



LETTER TO LADY HESKETH. 395 

which, in the stillness of the night, though at 
nearly the distance of two miles, invariably an- 
nounced the approach of his companion/' 

Once again, in 1797, Cowper wrote a few lines 
to Lady Hesketh. " To you once more," says he, 
" and too well I know why, I am under cruel ne- 
cessity of writing. Every line that I have ever 
sent you, I have believed under the influence of 
infinite despair, the last that I should ever send. 
This I know to be so. Whatever be your condi- 
tion, either now or hereafter, it is heavenly com- 
pared with mine, even at this moment. It is 
unnecessary to add that this comes from the most 
miserable of beings, whom a terrible minute made 
such." The post-mark of this letter was May 15, 
1797, but there was neither date nor signature, a 
picture of the painful confusion, and almost chaos, 
of the poet's suffering mind. Indeed, these letters 
disclose, by glimpses, the distraction and misery of 
the writer, just as the flashes of lightning over the 
sea, in a dark and stormy night, might reveal the 
form of a dismasted ship driving wrecked before 
the tempest. 

There were three similar letters in 1798, in the 
second of which, speaking of the universal blank 
that even nature had become to him, though once 
he was susceptible of so much pleasure from the 
delightful scenes Lady Hesketh had been describ- 
ing, he says, " My state of mind is a medium 



DOCTRINE OF NECESSITY, 

through which the beauties of Paradise itself 
could not be communicated with any effect but a 
painful one." 

In the third, and last he ever wrote to her, in 
December, 1798, he was in full possession of his 
faculties, except for the weight of the mountain 
of his despair, yet wrote under the idea that all 
his volitions and actions were the result of an in- 
evitable and eternal necessity. He described him- 
self as giving all his miserable days, and no small 
portion of his nights also, to the revisal of his 
Homer ; a hopeless employment, he said, on every 
account, both because he himself was hopeless 
while engaged in it, and because, with all his 
labor, it was impossible to do justice to the an- 
tique original in a modern language. " That 
under such disabling circumstances, and in despair 
both of myself and of my work, I should yet at- 
tend to it, and even feel something like a wish to 
improve it, would be unintelligible to me, if I did 
not know that my volitions, and consequently my 
actions, are under a perpetual, irresistible influ- 
ence. Whatever they were in the earlier part of 
my life, that such they are now, is with me a mat- 
ter of every day's experience. This doctrine I 
once denied, and even now assert the truth of it re- 
specting myself only. There can be no peace 
ivhere there is no freedom ; and he is a wretch in- 
deed who is a necessitarian by experience." 



SLAVERY. 397 

There can be no peace where there is no free- 
dom ! How did this truth spring up from the 
deepest depth in Cowper's heart ! How it re- 
minds us, wrung as its expression here is from his 
own anguish, of those exquisitely beautiful and 
noble sentiments, manifestly the sincerest utter- 
ances of his soul, with which, in " The Task/' he 
has denounced the curse of slavery, and celebrated 
freedom as man's birthright from his Creator ! 



Whose freedom is by sufferance, and at will 
Of a superior, he is never free. 
Who lives, and is not weary of a life 
Exposed to manacles, deserves them well, 
The State that strives for liberty, though foiled, 
And forced to abandon what she bravely sought, 
Deserves, at least, applause for her attempt, 
And pity for her loss. But that 's a cause 
Not often unsuccessful. Power usurped 
Is weakness when opposed, concious of wrong, 
'Tis pusillanimous, and prone to flight ; 
But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought 
Of freedom, in that hope itself possess 
All that the contest calls for ; spirit, strength, 
The scorn of danger, and united hearts, 
The surest presage of the good they seek. 
'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower 
Of fleeting life its luster and perfume ; 
And we are weeds without it. All constraint, 
Except what wisdom lays on evil men, 
Is evil : hurts the faculties, impedes 
Their progress in the road of science ; blinds 
The eyesight of discovery ; and begets 
In those that suffer it, a sordid mind, 
Bestial, a meager intellect, unfit 
To be the tenant of man's noble form. 



398 LAST LETTER TO NEWTON. 

The coincidences between Cowper's poetry and 
his letters are interesting and instructive in the 
extreme ; and the more so, because he never 
thought of them, and never repeated himself, but 
always wrote what was the original creation of a 
present experience. 

The last letter of his life was written to the 
dearest Christian friend he had ever known, John 
Newton, thanking him for his own last letter, and 
for a book which Newton had sent him, and which 
Mr. Johnson had just read to him. How sad and 
dark were his last words to that dear friend, whom 
he was just on the eve of meeting and welcoming 
in the rapture and glory of a world of eternal hap- 
piness and light ! It was April 11, 1799, and he 
says, " If the book afforded me any amusement, or 
suggested to me any reflections, they were only 
such as served to embitter, if possible, still more 
the present moment by a sad retrospect of those 
days when I thought myself secure of an eternity 
to be spent with the spirits of such men as he 
whose life afforded the subject of it. But I was 
little aware of what I had to exj)ect, and that a 
storm was at hand, which in one terrible moment 
would darken, and in another still more terrible 
blot out that prospect forever. Adieu, dear sir, 
whom in those days I called dear friend with feel- 
ings that justified the appellation." 

At this time, Cowper had just finished the final 



LAST ORIGINAL POEM. 399 

revisal of his Homer, and could converse in regard 
to other literary undertakings, for the vigor of his 
mind was unabated, nor had the power of his im- 
agination, nor the tenderness and sensibility of his 
affections, been diminished by his gloom. His 
affectionate kinsman proposed to him to continue 
his poem on " The Four Ages," and accordingly he 
altered and added a few lines, but remarked " that 
it was too great a work for him to attempt in his 
present situation." The next day he wrote in 
Latin verse the poem entitled " The Ice Islands," 
and a few days afterward translated it into English. 
The day after that translation, the 20th of March, 
he wrote the last original poem he ever composed, 
those most affecting stanzas, entitled " The Cast- 
away," founded upon an occurrence related in 
Anson's Voyages, which he had remembered for 
many years. 



Obscurest night involved the sky, 
Th' Atlantic billows roared, 

"When such a destined wretch as I, 
"Wash'd headlong from on board, 

Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 

His floating home forever left. 

No braver chief could Albion boast, 
Than he with whom he went, 

Nor ever ship left Albion's coast, 
"With warmer wishes sent. 

He loved them both, but both in vain, 

Nor him beheld, nor her again. 



400 THE CASTAWAY. 

Not long beneath the whelming brine, 
Expert to swim, he lay ; 

Nor soon he felt his strength decline, 
Or courage die away ; 

But waged with death a lasting strife, 

Supported by despair of life. 

He shouted : nor his friends had failed 
To check the vessel's course, 

But so the furious blast prevailed, 
That, pitiless perforce, 

They left their outcast mate behind, 

And scudded still before the wind. 

Some succor yet they could afford ; 

And, such as storms allow, 
The cask, the coop, the floated cord, 

Delayed not to bestow ; 
But he (they knew) not ship, nor shore, 
"Whate'er they gave, should visit more. 

Nor, cruel as it seemed, could he 
Their haste himself condemn, 

Aware that flight, in such a sea 
Alone could rescue them ; 

Yet bitter felt it still to die, 

Deserted, and his friends so nigh. 

He long survives, who lives an hour 

In ocean, self-upheld ; 
And so long he, with unspent power, 

His destiny repelled. 
And ever, as the minutes flew, 
Entreated help, or cried — adieu. 

At length, his transient respite passed, 
His comrades, who before 

Had heard his voice in every blast, 
Could catch the sound no more. 

For them, by toil subdued, he drank 

The stifling wove, and then he sank. 



gay's fables. 401 

No poet wept him, but the page 

Of narrative sincere, 
That tells his name, his worth, his age, 

Is wet with Anson's tear. 
And tears by bards or heroes shed, 
Alike immortalize the dead. 

I therefore purpose not, or dream, 

Descanting on his fate, 
To give the melancholy theme 

A more enduring date ; 
But misery still delights to trace 
Its semblance in another's case. 

No voice Divine the storm allayed, 

No light propitious shone ; 
When, snatched from all effectual air, 

We perished, each alone : 
But I beneath a rougher sea, 
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he. 

This was his last poem, and his last attempt at 
poetry, though, as late as January, 1800, he em- 
ployed himself in translating some of Gay's Fa- 
bles into Latin verse. The regret has often "been 
expressed, as it was in his life-time, that his great 
powers should not have given to some other original 
poetical undertaking rather than employed for so 
many years in the translation of Homer. But he 
had accomplished enough for one poet in the com- 
position of " The Task." What God sees fit to 
do in the discipline of the human mind by poetry, 
He evidently does sparingly. And, indeed, if the 
quantity were greater, the value, would be less, and 
the effect would be diminished. It is like the 
precious metals for the coin of society ; abundance 



402 cowper's deliverance. 

would destroy their use. So Divine Providence in 
eveiy age limits and regulates the supply of poets 
and of poetry in the world. Another poem like 
the last might have been produced, but the effect 
of both together would perhaps not have been so 
great as that of Cowper's volume alone. 

When Cowper wrote " The Castaway," he was 
in reality, as co time, just on the verge of Heaven ; 
the day of his deliverance was drawing nigh. 
Nevertheless, up to the last hour his mind re- 
mained in deep, unbroken gloom. In March, the 
physician in Norwich being requested to see him, 
asked him how he felt. " Feel !" said Cowper, 
" I feel unutterable despair !" The 19th of April, 
Mr. Johnson, " apprehending that his death was 
near, adverted to the affliction both of body and 
mind which Cowper was enduring, and ventured to 
speak of his approaching dissolution as the signal 
of his deliverance. After a pause of a few mo- 
ments, less interrupted by the objections of his 
desponding relative than he had dared to hope, he 
proceeded to an observation more consolatory still ; 
namely, that in the world to which he was hasten- 
ing, a merciful Kedeemer had prepared inexpressi- 
ble happiness for all His children, and therefore for 
him. To the first part of this sentence, Cowper 
had listened with composure ; but the concluding 
words were no sooner uttered, than his passionately 
expressed entreaties that his companion would de- 



ANGELIC LIGHT. 403 

sist from any further observations of a similar 
kind, clearly proved that, though it was on the eve 
of being invested with angelic light, the darkness 
of delusion still vailed his spirit." He died as 
calmly as a sleeping infant, in the afternoon of the 
25th of April, 1800, and from that moment the ex- 
pression into which the countenance settled was 
observed by his loving relative "to be that of 
calmness and composure, mingled, as it were, with 
holy surprise ;" and he regarded this as an index 
of the last thoughts and enjoyments of his soul, 
in its gradual escape from the depths of that in- 
scrutable despair in which it had been so long 
shrouded. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

MISSIONARY SPEECH BY DR. DUFF. — SPHERE OF COWPER'S USEFUL- 
NESS. — COWPER'S OWN REVIEW OF HIS EARLY LIFE. — PROVIDENCE 
AND GRACE IN IT. — COWPER'S ADMIRABLE CRITICISMS. — HYMNS 
FOR THE PARISH CLERK. — ADVICE IN REGARD TO STUDY. 

It is a sweet thing to behold how the words of 
poets passed into the skies become the resort of 
Christian hearts for the utterance of their deepest 
and holiest feelings. This is the case, above all 
others, with the poetry of Watts and Cowper. 
How many souls have they been permitted to ac- 
company, and even to persuade and allure to the 
mercy-seat, and to interpret the breathings of how 
many hearts in their nearest approaches to God on 
earth, and on the solemn verge of death, and al- 
most in the very entrance to Heaven ! And yet, 
through how much suffering, in the instance of 
Cowper's genius, was this great privilege accorded ! 
And with what ineffable delight must such beati- 
fied minds look down from amid their part in the 
anthems of Heaven, to behold assemblages of 
saints on earth adoring and praising God through 



MISSIONARY CLIMAX. 405 

the instrumentality of their compositions ! We 
thought of Cowper, and his earthly gloom and 
desolation, and his rapture in the world of light 
and glory, on occasion of one of those vast and 
crowded gatherings, when the missionary Dr. Duff 
poured forth the fervor of his Christian eloquence. 
At the close of one of his last speeches in America, 
on occasion of the meeting of the American Board 
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, his mind 
had been wrought up to such a point of excited 
feeling, and climacteric agglomeration of thought, 
sentences and images, that by the very law of 
evolution he was forced to go higher and higher 
with each successive sentence, till an almost pain- 
ful feeling of wonder and anxiety was produced in 
almost every mind — how can he end ? how can he 
close ? how descend from such an elevation, or 
how continue his soaring ? There was but one 
page in one poem in the world that could have 
given him the means, and that was in the sixth 
book of " The Task ;" and it was as if Cowper 
himself, as a guardian angel, had borne him on his 
wings, and lighted with him from his transcendent 
flight. He closed his thrilling address, and its un- 
rivaled climax, with those magnificent lines, 

One song employs all nations, and all cry, 
Worthy the Lamb, for He was slain for us ! 
The dwellers in the vales and in the rocks 
Shout to each other, and the mountain-tops 



406 cowper's ministry. 

From distant mountains catch the flying joy, 
Till, nation after nation taught the strain, 
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round ! 

If our recollection does not mislead us, we believe 
the speaker repeated the last line three times, 
swinging his long arm at each exulting repetition, 
with an accompanying sweep of grandeur, 

Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round ! 
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round ! 
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round ! 

The effect was sublime, overwhelming, and it 
seemed as if the vast audience would break forth 
into the same shout simultaneously ! 

At one time, Cowper was seriously questioning 
whether he ought not to devote himself to the 
ministry of the Gospel ; but the case was soon 
made perfectly plain to his own mind, as indeed it 
was afterward to all. His sphere of labor and of 
usefulness had been determined by Divine Provi- 
dence, and the ruin of all his own schemes was just 
a necessary part of that discipline by which God 
would prepare him for the dominion he was to 
hold by his genius and piety in men's minds and 
affections. It was a much wider dominion than he 
ever could have gained in sacred orders ; a domin- 
ion over the Church which indeed he could never 
have obtained as a minister in and of the Church. 
He knew this, and sometimes playfully intimated 



COWPES'S ADVICE. 407 

as much to Lady Hesketh, as when he heard from 
her that a certain duchess was interesting herself 
in his behalf. " Who in the world/' exclaims he, 

" set the duchess of a-going ? But if all 

the Duchesses in the world were spinning, like so 
many whirligigs, for my benefit, I would not stop 
them. It is a noble thing to be a poet, it makes 
all the world so lively. I might have preached 
more sermons than even Tillotson did, and better, 
and the world would have been still fast asleep ; 
but a volume of verse is a fiddle that puts the 
universe in motion." 

Cowper sometimes thought it was his over-sensi- 
tive shyness that ruined him, in preventing him 
from succeeding at the bar. He sympathized 
much with his young friends Johnson and Rose, 
when he saw in them something of the same awk- 
ward timidity. The advice he gave them both 
was excellent, especially to Eose. " I pitied you," 
says he, "for the fears which deprived you of your 
uncle's company, and the more for having suffered 
so much by those fears myself. Fight against that 
vicious fear, for such it is, as strenuously as you 
can. It is the worst enemy that can attack a man 
destined to the forum ; — it ruined me. To associ- 
ate as much as possible with the most respectable 
company for good sense and good breeding, is, I 
believe, the only, at least I am sure it is the best, 
remedy. The society of men of pleasure will not 



408 THE SOWING-TIME. 

cure it, but rather leaves us more exposed to its 
influence in company of better persons!' 

The ruin of Cowper as a lawyer, politician, and 
man of the world, was the making of him as a 
poet and a useful heing, but only bj the interven- 
tion of Divine grace. Without this, he would have 
been ruined indeed. And in a beautiful letter he 
commends the same dear young friend for his dili- 
gence in the study of the law. " You do well, my 
dear sir, to improve your opportunity ; to speak in 
the rural phrase, this is your sowing-time, and the 
sheaves you look for can never be yours, unless you 
make that use of it. The color of our whole life 
is generally such as the three or four first years in 
which we are our own masters, make it. Then it 
is that we may be said to shape our own destiny, 
and to treasure up for ourselves a series of future 
successes or disappointments. Had I employed 
my time as wisely as you, in a situation very sim- 
ilar to yours, I had never been a poet perhaps, but 
I might by this time have acquired a character of 
more importance in society, and a situation in 
which my friends would have been better pleased 
to see me. But three years misspent in an at- 
torney's office were almost of course followed by 
several more, equally misspent in the Temple, and 
the consequence has been, as the Italian epitaph 
says, Sto qui. The only use I can make of my- 
self now, at least the best, is to serve in terrorem 



cowper's criticism. 409 

to others, when occasion may happen to offer, that 
they may escape (so far as my admonitions can 
have any weight with them) my folly and my fate. 
When you feel yourself tempted to relax a little 
of the strictness of your present discipline, and to 
indulge in amusement incompatible with your 
future interests, think on your friend at Weston." 

Cowper's letters contain some of the finest 
passages of instructive criticism in the English 
language. Of this character are his remarks on 
occasion of one of his own poetical lines having 
been tampered with to make it smoother. 

" I know," says he, " that the ears of modern 
verse-writers are delicate to an excess, and their 
readers are troubled with the same squeamishness 
as themselves, so that, if a line do not run as smooth 
as quicksilver, they are offended. A critic of the 
present day serves a poem as a cook serves. a dead 
turkey, when she fastens the legs of it to a post, 
and draws out all the sinews. For this we may 
thank Pope ; but unless we could imitate him in 
the closeness and compactness of his expression, 
as well as in the smoothness of his numbers, we 
had better drop the imitation, which serves no 
other purpose than to emasculate and weaken all 
we write. Give me a manly, rough line, with a 
deal of meaning in it, rather than a whole poem 
full of musical periods, that have nothing but their 

oily smoothness to recommend them/' 

18 



410 GOOD SENSE AND SIMPLICITY. 

" There is a roughness on a plum which nobody 
that understands fruit would rub off, though the 
plum would be much more polished without it. I 
wish you to guard me from all such meddling ; as- 
suring you that I always write as smoothly as I 
can. but that I never did, never will, sacrifice the 
spirit or sense of a passage to the sound of it." 

The power and charm of Cowper's good sense 
and simplicity, as well as tenderness of feeling, in 
his poetry, were acknowledged in a very unexpected 
way, when the clerk of All-Saints' parish in North- 
hampton came to him with a renewed application 
for the annual mortuary stanzas to be printed with 
his Bill of Mortality at Christmas. Oowper told 
him there must be plenty of poets at Northhamp- 
ton, and referred him in particular to his name- 
sake .Mr. Cox, the statuary, as a successful wooer 
of the Muse. The clerk made answer that all 
this was very true, and he had already borrowed 
help from him. " But, alas ! sir, Mr. Cox is a 
gentleman of much reading, and the people of our 
town do not well understand him. He has written 
for me, but nine in ten of us were stone-blind to 
his meaning." Cowper felt all the force of this 
equivocal compliment ; his mortified vanity came 
near refusing, if the merit of his own verses was 
considered as insured by the smallness of his read- 
ing. But finding that the poor clerk had walked 
over to Weston on purpose to implore his assist- 



MORTUARY VERSES. 411 

ance, and was in considerable distress,- he good- 
naturedly consented, and supplied the clerk's Mor- 
tality Bill with his beautiful verses for several 
years ; a fig for the poets, said he, who write 
epitaphs upon individuals ! I have written one 
that serves two hundred persons. Among these 
productions is to be found the beautiful dirge, be- 
ginning, 

Thankless for favors from on high, 

Man thinks he fades too soon; 
Though 'tis his privilege to die, 

"Would he improve the boon. 

The last verse in this poem is truly sublime ; and 
it is one of the most perfect stanzas, taking into 
consideration the greatness and compactness of 
thought expressed, and the dignity and simplicity 
of the expression, that even Cowper ever wote. 

'Tis judgment shakes him: there's the fear, 

That prompts the wish to stay ; 
He has incurred a long arrear, 
And must despair to pay. 

Pay ? follow Christ, and all is paid ; 

His death your peace insures ; 
Think on the grave where He was laid, 

And calm descend to yours. 

Another of these pieces is that beginning, 

most delightful hour by man 

Experienced here below, 
The hour that terminates his span, 

His folly and his woe ! 



412 CEITICAL APOTHEGMS. 

That also beginning, 

He lives, who lives to God alone, 

And all are dead beside ; 
For other source than God is none, 

Whence life can be supplied. 

This last was composed in 1793 ; and it is some- 
what strange that the critics who deemed it so 
hazardous to the verge of insanity for Cowper to 
have been engaged by Newton in composing the 
Olney Hymns, should not have fallen upon poor 
John Cox, the parish clerkof Northhampton, for 
the pertinacity with which he enlisted the genius 
and the heart of the poet again in so dangerous 
an undertaking. 

One of Cowper's apothegms to his young friend 
and kinsman Mr. Johnson, deserves quoting, be- 
cause, although simplicity and perspicuity were in 
Cowper the intuition and native element of his 
genius, yet he also made it a principle, both of 
intellect and conscience. "Kemeniber," said he, 
" that in writing, perspicuity is always more than 
half the battle ; the want of it is the ruin of more 
than half the poetry that is published. A mean- 
ing that does not stare you in the face, is as bad 
as no meaning, because nobody will take the pains 
to poke for it." 

We may add here the admirable advice given 
by Cowper in another letter to the same young 



cowfer's theology. 413 

friend, in regard to his course of study. " Life is 
too short to afford time even for serious trifles. 
Pursue what you know to be attainable, make 
truth your object, and your studies will make you 
a wise man. Let your divinity, if I may advise, 
be the divinity of the glorious Keformation : I 
mean in contradiction to Arminianism, and all the 
isms that ever were broached in this world of 
error and ignorance. The divinity of the Keforma- 
tion is called Calvinism, but injuriously. It has 
been that of the Church of Christ in all ages. It 
is the divinity of St. Paul, and of St. Paul's Mas- 
ter, who met him in his way to Damascus." 

Cowper's own religious views, as well as New- 
ton's, were what are called Calvinistic ; but he 
meant that any nomenclature except that of 
Christ, given to the divinity of the Keformation, 
was injurious. That divinity rose above all names, 
went back of all Churches, and was taken imme- 
diately from the Scriptures. 

What Cowper practiced in himself, and what 
grew out of the very instinct and life of his char- 
acter, he loved in others. He told Newton that 
he preferred his style as a historian (referring to 
Newton's excellent work on the early history of 
the Church) to that of the two most renowned 
writers of history the present day has seen. He 
referred not to Hume, whose style was more sim- 
ple, and whose volumes were not then all pub- 



414 hayley's friendship. 

lished, but to Eobertson and Gibbon. He gave 
bis reasons for this preference, witb bis own point 
and beauty. " In your style I see no affectation, 
in every line of tbeirs I see nothing else. They 
disgust ine always ; Eobertson with his pomp and 
his strut, and Gibbon with his finical and French 
manners. You are as correct as they. You ex- 
press yourself with as much precision. Your 
words are arranged with as much propriety, but 
you do not set your periods to a tune. They dis- 
cover a perpetual desire to exhibit themselves to 
advantage, whereas your subject engrosses you. 
They sing, and you say ; which, as history is a 
thing to be said and not sung, is in my judgment 
very much to your advantage. A writer that de- 
spises their tricks, and is yet neither inelegant nor 
inharmonious, proves himself, by that single cir- 
cumstance, a man of superior judgment and 
ability to them both. You have my reasons. I 
honor a manly character, in which good sense and 
a desire of doing good are the predominant feat- 
ures ; but affectation is an emetic." 

Hayley, one of the dearest friends, and the first 
biographer of Cowper, has connected his own fame 
with that of the poet by this friendship. It gives 
him an immortality which his pwn poetical works, 
though of no little excellence, could not have secured 
for him. His admiration and love of Cowper were 
heartfelt and unbounded ; but he did not exag- 



a stranger's love, 415 

gerate when he pronounced " The Task/' " taken 
all together, perhaps the most attractive poem 
that was ever produced, and such as required the 
rarest assemblage of truly poetical powers for its 
production." "Sweet bard!" exclaimed one of 
Hayley's correspondents, who never had enjoyed the 
pleasure of a personal acquaintance with the poet, 
but whose heart was inspired with the deepest 
Christian affection, contemplating Cowper's por- 
trait by Lawrence : 

" Sweet bard ! with whom in sympathy of choice 
I 've offctimes left the world at nature's voice, 
To join the song that all her creatures raise, 
To carol forth their great Creator's praise ; 
Or wrapt in visions of immortal day, 
Have gazed on Truth in Zion's heavenly way ; 
Sweet bard, may this thine image, all I know, 
Or ever may, of Cowper's form below, 
Teach one, who views it with a Christian's love, 
To seek and find thee in the realms above!" 



THE END. 



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